Thirty-five years of fishheads

I had my yearly dose of redneck glory tonight.  Yes, that’s right…it is the weekend of the 35th annual Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival.

To be clear, this festival celebrates the fish, not the hairstyle, but I assure you there is plenty of both to be found at the Mullet Festival.  The fashion of the festival appeared to be camouflage hoodies, but they didn’t work all that well because I could definitely see them.  And to the girls in Daisy Dukes, camo hoodies, and cowboy boots and hats,  I can only say that you may think you are cool, but everyone else knows the truth:  it is 49 degrees, and you are COLD.

It was the GrandSpark’s first Mullet Fest.  I would have gotten him a “Baby’s First Mullet Festival” t-shirt or a Christmas ornament or something but oddly enough, the vendors weren’t peddling those sorts of wares.  I would think it would be right up their alley.

The best part of the Mullet Festival is the food.  We discovered tonight that there is an advantage to going on Friday night.  The food (and the frying oil) is fresher.  Saint Somebody-or-other’s Catholic Church had a trailer selling fish on a stick (don’t be impressed…you can literally get nearly anything on a stick at some booth at the Fest).  I skipped the stick and just got a basket of fish and chips.  The fish was tile fish and it was absolutely delicious.  Mr. Sparky found a bunch of church ladies who were peddling Southern Soul Food, and he came away with catfish, greens, beans, cornbread, and a brownie.  One Sparkette had a bowl of fabulous red beans and rice, and the other Sparkette opted for a smoked turkey sandwich from Benny’s BBQ, which is always a good choice.  Later in the evening Mr. Sparky and I split a funnel cake, a food I am sure they will serve in heaven.

The rest of our evening was spent leisurely strolling through the artists and vendors.  Jamie Babula, an artist whose work I absolutely love, had a booth.  I could have stood there and stared at her pieces all night.  Not many artists keep me quite that occupied.  Or course, there were also plenty of booths of crocheted tissue box covers and ginormous hair bows for little girls who will one day need a therapist to deal with the trauma of wearing a four pound hunk of hot glued ribbon and tulle on their head.   I noticed a lack of beer can art vendors this year but didn’t complain to any of the event planners about it.  I hope nobody else did, either.  Wouldn’t count on it, though.

We didn’t visit the midway and we didn’t spend any time listening to the concert performers.  Let me re-phrase that:  we didn’t purposefully attend the singing performances.  There is no getting away from hearing the music.  The last band we heard seemed to be playing a lot of ’80s and ’90s music.  They weren’t so bad and in fact they were rather enjoyable as very loud background music.  Prior to them some band played a lot of music that obviously meant a lot to them, because they belted it from their hearts.  Unfortunately, being in tune was not their forte.  I realize that I’m rather sensitive to pitch issues, but goodness…if you’re gonna wail, at least wail on key, you know?

We go to this thing because it’s not often small towns make a tradition of throwing an annual shindig like this.  It’s part of what defines Niceville, aka Boggy Bayou, and though it’s perpetually rather rough around the edges, it’s the sort of hometown Americana that is often crowded out in favor of slick productions and upscale offerings.  The Festival planners have acquiesced to that and now bring in big name country music entertainers for the late night performances, and upped the admission costs accordingly.  I hope it doesn’t get any “better” than that because it really doesn’t get much better than this.  Not without destroying the character of the entire thing.

Though I did have to come home and take a shower to wash some of the character out of my hair.  I smelled as if I’d rolled in an ashtray.  Nasty.