Fall Festival is billed as the biggest street fair outside of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Right here is southern Indiana.

This year the weather was perfect; warm days and cool evenings. Each year dozens of not-for-profit organizations set up booths along the street and sell every imaginable form of fried food each competing with the next for uniqueness.

This year, for the first time, fried Kool-aid was offered, along with fried brain sandwiches (a perennial favorite), fried apples, fried grasshoppers, fried...well, you get the idea. Bacon was also featured this year, thanks to a national chain restaurant that advertised its own baconalia festival. Our Fall Festival featured bacon brownies. Next year I expect to find fried bacon brownies on the menu. It is no wonder then to anyone that this city in southern Indiana boasts being number one in the whole nation for obesity. One can counter that this festival only happens once a year but the proof is in the pudding, the fried pudding apparently.

Another event took place at a friend's home. I mention this to remind you what living in the rural south is really like. It was an all-men gathering; a celebration of the home owner's newly acquired band saw. The group of invited men, young and old, stood on the porch, gathered in hushed reverence as the saw was switched on. Amid oohs and aahs, they turned their ears to listen to the quiet hum of the new motor. On and off, the switch was operated by all of them as they marveled at their friend's acquisition. After a fitting time when everyone had listened and switched, they all went inside the home for cider and a discussion of all the different types of Indiana hardwood.

These are my current musings from living here. Sometimes I just plain miss the city. And that's what I think about it.