Hats On!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of brown beneath the sky:
Hats On!
The fleet is passing by!
They’re late this year. Usually, by mid-June, they soar in to reconnoiter the area, first the scouts in their spiffy black turtlenecks, then the advance guard in their clever mauve berets. If all is deemed satisfactory, it’s Full Forward! and the armada crashes on the beach and begins to lay claim to the surrounding region, acre by acre, house by house, farm by farm. You barely notice them at first as they flit about the ponds and marshes, setting up shop, laying eggs, surveilling the environs. Then, one day, the first buzz of horror, as one lights on your neck, known in mosquito parlance as “the bank,” and makes a generous withdrawal. It’s all downhill from there as squads of kamikazes swarm in, ready to die for the greater glory of the empire.
Where they’ve been, nobody knows. Did they vacation too long in Montserrat, bumfuzzled by their rum drinks, forgetting their schedules? Were the tasty vacationers on Barbados too delicious to abandon? Inquiring minds want to know but we’ll probably never find out the truth of it. All we know is they’re here now and not a minute too soon. As everybody knows, July 12th is the start of our annual Summer Mosquito Festival here in Fairfield and what’s a Summer Mosquito Festival without the mosquitoes? By way of comparison, we once visited nearby Newberry for their annual Watermelon Festival. It had been a bad growing season and they had no local watermelon. The town fathers frantically searched for importable product, which arrived midway through the festival, but it’s just not the same. We scratched Newberry off our future festivals list.
You might wonder why there is a Fairfield Mosquito Festival at all. Well, it seems like all the other festival names were taken. Starke has its Strawberry Festival, Micanopy has the Fall Harvest Festival and out in tiny Windsor they even have a Zucchini Festival. We’re not making this stuff up. One day, the populace of Windsor decided the fire trucks were getting a little musty and needed upspiffing. They decided they would put on a festival of some sort, draw in the local tourists—who will show up for anything where there is free food involved—and make money by renting booth space to purveyors of dubious goods and services. It worked. Nobody who was anybody wanted to miss the annual crowning of the little Zu-Queenie or the Duke of Zuke. They’ve got nice shiny fire engines over in Windsor now. The nearby Micanopy festival originally came about when the local marijuana-growing community decided to have a tongue-in-cheek celebration to honor the reaping of the crop. The whole thing grew like, well, marijuana. Now, nobody even remembers how the whole thing got started but it’s a major local event. With all the other festival ideas used up, Fairfield was left with the dregs.
Let me tell you a little about Fairfield because a little is all there is to tell. First of all, the tiny hamlet is at the intersection of Marion County Roads 225 and 316. The latter is often referred to as the Pathogenes Causeway and with good reason. To arrive at Fairfield, visitors should depart Interstate 75 at the Orange Lake/Irvine exit, heading west. Almost immediately, County Road 225 appears on the left. Following this road delivers one to exciting downtown Fairfield, home of the Cordwin Sawmill, a perfectly good U.S. Post Office and a seven-eleven type edifice called, for some reason, the V-Mart. The V-Mart is not your typical seven-eleven. I think the family which runs the place is of Indian origin and I might ask them about it if they were not always in outside communication on their hands-free headphones and unavailable for polite conversation. They are usually not even in the front section of the store, busy as they are cooking chicken in back for their legions of Mexican horse farm employees. Long ago, I decided having the correct change would save me tons of time in this place so that is my current modus operandi. I think I recognize the incense which is always burning as Indian from my Subterranean Circus days but you can never be certain. Nor am I sure whether they burn the incense to cover up the smell of the chicken, a real treat at 9 in the morning, or whether they cook the chicken to cover up the smell of the incense.
The Post Office is currently manned by the resourceful Johanna, pronounce that with a Yo, please. Johanna is a middle-aged woman who doubles up as our every-other-Saturday housecleaner. We share her with the Hollis Real Estate Empire just down the street. Johanna is a little different from your usual neighborhood postmistress, most of whom don’t come to work on a motorcycle, but she’s effective and helpful. I’m trying hard not to be suspicious of the gentleman who unfailingly brings her coffee every morning because, after all, Johanna is a church-going woman.
The sawmill hasn’t been doing too much sawmilling lately but they keep in business with a lot of tree work. If you’ve been keeping track of tree work prices lately, you’ll probably understand why they won’t be going out of that business for awhile, which is a good thing for travellers on the Pathogenes Causeway who have grown fond of watching Mrs. Cordwin walking her dogs each morning in her short shorts.
We also have a Greek Orthodox monastery in Fairfield. At least, I think it’s a monastery. Those Greek Orthodox priests aren’t much for everyday chitchat, even on those rare occasions you might run into one of them at the Post Office. They have a very nice facility further out on 225 and they keep the shutters drawn so who knows what sort of debauchery goes on there? In Fairfield, we believe in letting sleeping priests lie. In return, they have promised to have no ouzo festivals with loud Greek music. We think this is a very satisfactory arrangement all around.
Down the road a bit from Fairfield is the larger community of Reddick, which even has a pharmacy, a food store and a bank. Of course, when you have all these exciting features sometimes they bring in the criminal element. In Fairfield, we have no crime. We used to have a little but Siobhan and the Sheriff’s Office dispatched the peddlers of marijuana and illegal cigarettes at the end of the street a couple years ago and since then we’re golden. We didn’t mind them all that much until their customers started turning up in our driveway, bumming money for their purchases with sad tales of hungry wives and children, and we hate sad stories. Anyway, a few years back, Reddick got so rowdy the sheriff set up an auxiliary headquarters there and everything quieted down. We also have the Big City—Williston (pop. 2500)—to our west. We’ve told you about Williston before. Williston is World Redneck Headquarters. They have eighty barbecue places and forty-five churches and even a video-rental store which hasn’t completely closed yet. The women shopping in the Winn-Dixie like to wear Smith & Wesson tee shirts. Sometimes, we go to the Williston High football games and we have discovered that every single person in Williston knows everybody else. They have an annual rodeo in Williston. One time, our friend, Steve Gaffalione, went to the rodeo with his wife and children. Steve likes to wear earrings in his ears. He said the people at the rodeo said mean things to him. We think this marks significant progress for Williston. I mean, he did get out alive. Nobody even knocked him upside the head. You’ve got to take your improvements where you can find them. Tiny steps. Very tiny.
Anyway, it’s time to get ready for the annual Mosquito Parade, where all the little Fairfield kids dress up like insects and everybody wears antennae on their heads. The most exciting part is when the giant kazoo band comes buzzing down the street, tossing tiny cans of Off to bystanders and summarily mooning the crowd. Ah, yes, country living at its best—in Fairfield, U.S.A. Bet you’re jealous.
And We Thought Soccer Was For Sissies
SAO PAULO—Police say enraged spectators invaded a football field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body after he stabbed a player to death. The Public Safety Department of the state of Maranhao says in a statement that it all started when referee Otavio da Silva expelled player Josenir Abreu from a game last weekend. The two got in a fistfight, then Silva took out a knife and stabbed Abreu, who died on his way to the hospital. The statement issued this week says Abreu’s friends and relatives immediately “rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body.” Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field. Police have arrested one suspect.
See now, we think soccer might actually finally catch on in this country if they featured these kinds of interesting side events. Though finding a full complement of referees could pose a tiny challenge.
That’s all, folks….
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of brown beneath the sky:
Hats On!
The fleet is passing by!
They’re late this year. Usually, by mid-June, they soar in to reconnoiter the area, first the scouts in their spiffy black turtlenecks, then the advance guard in their clever mauve berets. If all is deemed satisfactory, it’s Full Forward! and the armada crashes on the beach and begins to lay claim to the surrounding region, acre by acre, house by house, farm by farm. You barely notice them at first as they flit about the ponds and marshes, setting up shop, laying eggs, surveilling the environs. Then, one day, the first buzz of horror, as one lights on your neck, known in mosquito parlance as “the bank,” and makes a generous withdrawal. It’s all downhill from there as squads of kamikazes swarm in, ready to die for the greater glory of the empire.
Where they’ve been, nobody knows. Did they vacation too long in Montserrat, bumfuzzled by their rum drinks, forgetting their schedules? Were the tasty vacationers on Barbados too delicious to abandon? Inquiring minds want to know but we’ll probably never find out the truth of it. All we know is they’re here now and not a minute too soon. As everybody knows, July 12th is the start of our annual Summer Mosquito Festival here in Fairfield and what’s a Summer Mosquito Festival without the mosquitoes? By way of comparison, we once visited nearby Newberry for their annual Watermelon Festival. It had been a bad growing season and they had no local watermelon. The town fathers frantically searched for importable product, which arrived midway through the festival, but it’s just not the same. We scratched Newberry off our future festivals list.
You might wonder why there is a Fairfield Mosquito Festival at all. Well, it seems like all the other festival names were taken. Starke has its Strawberry Festival, Micanopy has the Fall Harvest Festival and out in tiny Windsor they even have a Zucchini Festival. We’re not making this stuff up. One day, the populace of Windsor decided the fire trucks were getting a little musty and needed upspiffing. They decided they would put on a festival of some sort, draw in the local tourists—who will show up for anything where there is free food involved—and make money by renting booth space to purveyors of dubious goods and services. It worked. Nobody who was anybody wanted to miss the annual crowning of the little Zu-Queenie or the Duke of Zuke. They’ve got nice shiny fire engines over in Windsor now. The nearby Micanopy festival originally came about when the local marijuana-growing community decided to have a tongue-in-cheek celebration to honor the reaping of the crop. The whole thing grew like, well, marijuana. Now, nobody even remembers how the whole thing got started but it’s a major local event. With all the other festival ideas used up, Fairfield was left with the dregs.
Let me tell you a little about Fairfield because a little is all there is to tell. First of all, the tiny hamlet is at the intersection of Marion County Roads 225 and 316. The latter is often referred to as the Pathogenes Causeway and with good reason. To arrive at Fairfield, visitors should depart Interstate 75 at the Orange Lake/Irvine exit, heading west. Almost immediately, County Road 225 appears on the left. Following this road delivers one to exciting downtown Fairfield, home of the Cordwin Sawmill, a perfectly good U.S. Post Office and a seven-eleven type edifice called, for some reason, the V-Mart. The V-Mart is not your typical seven-eleven. I think the family which runs the place is of Indian origin and I might ask them about it if they were not always in outside communication on their hands-free headphones and unavailable for polite conversation. They are usually not even in the front section of the store, busy as they are cooking chicken in back for their legions of Mexican horse farm employees. Long ago, I decided having the correct change would save me tons of time in this place so that is my current modus operandi. I think I recognize the incense which is always burning as Indian from my Subterranean Circus days but you can never be certain. Nor am I sure whether they burn the incense to cover up the smell of the chicken, a real treat at 9 in the morning, or whether they cook the chicken to cover up the smell of the incense.
The Post Office is currently manned by the resourceful Johanna, pronounce that with a Yo, please. Johanna is a middle-aged woman who doubles up as our every-other-Saturday housecleaner. We share her with the Hollis Real Estate Empire just down the street. Johanna is a little different from your usual neighborhood postmistress, most of whom don’t come to work on a motorcycle, but she’s effective and helpful. I’m trying hard not to be suspicious of the gentleman who unfailingly brings her coffee every morning because, after all, Johanna is a church-going woman.
The sawmill hasn’t been doing too much sawmilling lately but they keep in business with a lot of tree work. If you’ve been keeping track of tree work prices lately, you’ll probably understand why they won’t be going out of that business for awhile, which is a good thing for travellers on the Pathogenes Causeway who have grown fond of watching Mrs. Cordwin walking her dogs each morning in her short shorts.
We also have a Greek Orthodox monastery in Fairfield. At least, I think it’s a monastery. Those Greek Orthodox priests aren’t much for everyday chitchat, even on those rare occasions you might run into one of them at the Post Office. They have a very nice facility further out on 225 and they keep the shutters drawn so who knows what sort of debauchery goes on there? In Fairfield, we believe in letting sleeping priests lie. In return, they have promised to have no ouzo festivals with loud Greek music. We think this is a very satisfactory arrangement all around.
Down the road a bit from Fairfield is the larger community of Reddick, which even has a pharmacy, a food store and a bank. Of course, when you have all these exciting features sometimes they bring in the criminal element. In Fairfield, we have no crime. We used to have a little but Siobhan and the Sheriff’s Office dispatched the peddlers of marijuana and illegal cigarettes at the end of the street a couple years ago and since then we’re golden. We didn’t mind them all that much until their customers started turning up in our driveway, bumming money for their purchases with sad tales of hungry wives and children, and we hate sad stories. Anyway, a few years back, Reddick got so rowdy the sheriff set up an auxiliary headquarters there and everything quieted down. We also have the Big City—Williston (pop. 2500)—to our west. We’ve told you about Williston before. Williston is World Redneck Headquarters. They have eighty barbecue places and forty-five churches and even a video-rental store which hasn’t completely closed yet. The women shopping in the Winn-Dixie like to wear Smith & Wesson tee shirts. Sometimes, we go to the Williston High football games and we have discovered that every single person in Williston knows everybody else. They have an annual rodeo in Williston. One time, our friend, Steve Gaffalione, went to the rodeo with his wife and children. Steve likes to wear earrings in his ears. He said the people at the rodeo said mean things to him. We think this marks significant progress for Williston. I mean, he did get out alive. Nobody even knocked him upside the head. You’ve got to take your improvements where you can find them. Tiny steps. Very tiny.
Anyway, it’s time to get ready for the annual Mosquito Parade, where all the little Fairfield kids dress up like insects and everybody wears antennae on their heads. The most exciting part is when the giant kazoo band comes buzzing down the street, tossing tiny cans of Off to bystanders and summarily mooning the crowd. Ah, yes, country living at its best—in Fairfield, U.S.A. Bet you’re jealous.
And We Thought Soccer Was For Sissies
SAO PAULO—Police say enraged spectators invaded a football field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body after he stabbed a player to death. The Public Safety Department of the state of Maranhao says in a statement that it all started when referee Otavio da Silva expelled player Josenir Abreu from a game last weekend. The two got in a fistfight, then Silva took out a knife and stabbed Abreu, who died on his way to the hospital. The statement issued this week says Abreu’s friends and relatives immediately “rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body.” Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field. Police have arrested one suspect.
See now, we think soccer might actually finally catch on in this country if they featured these kinds of interesting side events. Though finding a full complement of referees could pose a tiny challenge.
That’s all, folks….
