Festival Season

Every time I write a post I look for signs of the seasons. This week, I have at times been in the dog-house because the signs of the seasons have been smeared up the walls. Ketchup-making, you see is dangerous work. You blend your tomatoes up with sugar, vinegar and spices and then boil the living daylights out of it to rid it of water, intensify the flavours and concentrate the preservatives- that is to say, the sugar and vinegar. Imagine for a moment, if you will, a bubble bursting in a gallon of ketchup which is boiling at around 230ºF. If the mental image does not resemble some of the more dramatic scenes in, say, Platoon, you’re imagining it wrong. Meanwhile Stacey, although maintaining the angelic demeanour and grace for which she is well-known, has nevertheless made it clear to me that next time I make ketchup I had better be more careful otherwise it won’t just be the ketchup which is smeared up the walls.

But it’s that time of year, frankly. This week’s activities have repeatedly filled the air with the eye-watering, nostril-scorching scent of boiling vinegar. As the result of a happy shopping accident, Thea ended up with enough packet mix to pickle enough cucumbers to stuff a yak. She therefore took one packet to use and passed the rest- enough to make a stone (that’s 14lb for US readers) of pickles- on to me. Well, frankly, I was brought up to believe that there’s only one thing to do when you have enough pickle for 14lbs of cucumbers, and that is to refuse to be intimidated by the scale of the project. The people at Avila Valley Barn were kind enough to sort us out with these pleasingly green specimens at bulk rates. They were washed, trimmed, cut into spears, packed, pickled, preserved and photographed looking something like an extraterrestrial barbershop quartet (left).

The beginning of Autumn is upon us; so testify the jars of ketchup and dill pickles, beetroot, nasturtium capers and pickled eggs in the kitchen. There will also be sandwich pickles and even more beetroot to follow if I have my way. Autumn is festival season on the coast. After Labor Day, once the tourists have gone home, the various communities start putting on their own small-scale festivals, which provide an insight into small-town American life which teeters on the cusp of being Too Much Information.

For instance, there was Pinedorado in Cambria. It’s called Pinedorado because they have pine trees there. It’s exactly that subtle. But I tell you what: Main Street, Cambria was packed with viewers on both sides for the 1.3 mile route of the parade, and it wasn’t hard to see why. As street theatre goes, it was second to none. I am reliably informed by Pinedorado veterans that it’s advisable to face hostilities fortified with more than one early-morning Bloody Mary to take the edge off the weirdness. In all fairness, the parade opened this year with the band of the 3rd Marine Air Wing (right) who really can play. They were followed by the Grand Marshall of the parade, Cambria resident Red Holloway- a saxophonist who, in his time, has played with Lionel Hampton, Billie Holliday, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, B B King, George Benson, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Aretha Franklin and Lester Young, among others. He wasn’t playing as much as presiding, in line with this year’s motto “Cambria is music to our ears.”

And there then follow the usual elements of local parades- police and firefighters, local charities and the marching bands of local schools. I found them quite impressive; as a former dedicated Band Geek at school, I dread to think what would have occurred if they’d tried to get us to march as well as play. On the other hand, sitting down allowed us to cultivate a more sophisticated, big-band sort of feel, especially as we played a good few Glen Miller numbers and wore waistcoats and bow ties, rather than the frankly panic-inducing uniforms worn by the marching band kids (left), which made them look like refugees from the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One can only assume that it’s good, character-building stuff.

 

As I say, this was all to be expected and, in all honesty, applauded; at which point the parade took an abrupt detour through the Twilight Zone. There was the truly unique performance of the  Friends of Cambria Library who gave an example of counter-marching while pushing book trolleys, which will not be easily forgotten.  Followed by local representatives of the Shriners, appearing as clowns on very small motorbikes. At ten in the morning, nursing a hangover, it was all a little difficult to grasp, but it was good clean fun and nobody got hurt. Everyone was watching with the same glazed expression of mild amusement and having a good chuckle at the people who’d been good enough sports to put the thing on.

 

Contrast this with the Morro Bay Avocado and Margarita Festival, which was held this past weekend. Far be it from me to criticise, but I would question the competence of the event’s organisers to arrange festivities within the confines of an establishment dedicated to the production of beer, ale, lager and stout. To get in, you had to join one of three lines to buy event tickets, and then join a fourth which cut across the other three in order to get in. The implication on the outside was that you needed to pay for what you wanted in advance by buying tickets which you would then hand over to traders inside as and when you wanted to buy things. In fact, very few traders inside could accept tickets, and if, like us, you had converted all your dollars to tickets, there was no way of laying hands on cash once inside. It was billed as the Avocado and Margarita festival, but the avocado farmers inside couldn’t accept tickets, much to their apparent annoyance, and the margaritas didn’t deserve billing. There was a single margarita stand. Hardly festive.

 

The purpose of the thing was to promote local avocado growers, and I think there are worse causes to champion. It’s superb to have good avocados which haven’t been shipped halfway round the world at vast economic and environmental cost. There was an awful lot of information about the avocado and the avocado farming industry. For instance, did you know that at www.avocadosource.com there are databases such as Avocado People (“Who’s who in the avocado world”) and selected articles from Subtropical Fruit News? Me neither. Either way, the whole thing smacked of trying too hard to do something which would be worthwhile doing properly. There wasn’t enough avocado. There wasn’t enough margarita. I didn’t need a marble pestle-and-mortar or an NFL t-shirt, and I failed to make the connection between those stalls and the avocado-and-margarita scene. There’s no stopping me eating avocados, I dare say, but I’ll not be queuing up to get into the “festival” next year.

 

At time of writing, I am looking forward to another festival in the epicentre of Central Coast quirkiness, Cambria. Coming up fast is the Cambria Scarecrow and Harvest Festival. This, I’m sure you will appreciate, is going to be charming, funny, and more than a little weird. For you, I will endure motorcycling clowns and scarecrows to boot. I’ll make sure the photos get uploaded.