The Fall Festival: A Cult Classic

The Fall Festival: A Cult Classic

By Melissa Martin

Writing Ð'* Instructor: Ethan Watters

November 18, 2007

Pronto pup, puppy chow, fudge puppy, elephant tears, monster ears, African Peanut Chicken, German golf balls, ostrich burger, elephant toes, brain sandwich, walking taco, ick on a stick, corn fritter, Indian fry bread, kuchen, buckeyes, bratwurst, polish sausage, roasted corn on the cob, sliders, brown sugar sweet taters, emu jerky, giant Texas Tenderloin, black jack burger, stromboli, beignets, turkey leg, chocolate covered grasshoppers, alligator stew, fried oreo, fried twinkie, fried pickle, chocolate covered banana, fried snickers and don't forget that the orange booth has the best Chicken and Dumplings and the chuck wagon has the best sausage burger. Oh, and get me some apple cider while you're over there.

I say this to my then husband, Aaron, as I shove yet another corn fritter smothered in maple syrup in my mouth. I've only been here an hour and I've already ingested onion rings, a pronto pup and a sausage burger. Am I at an eating contest? Who can gain weight the fastest match? No, we are at the 85th Annual West Side Nut Club Fall Festival in Evansville, IN, my hometown. The festival is six glorious days starting on a Monday. The first day everything is bright, clean, fresh and there is a feeling of excitement that sparkles off of every tree and street lamp that lines the four blocks of Franklin Street that the festival occupies. The smell of food mixes with the sweet smell of autumn leaves decaying on the ground. The sunlight filters through the autumn leaves, casting a brilliant aura of yellow, orange and red upon people's faces. And as night falls a briskness fills the air urging romantic scenarios of riding the ferris wheel, hot chocolate and cute boy in hand. Candy apples glisten under the dancing carnival lights as carnies call out to try and get you to spend seven dollars on 6 ping pong balls. "EVERYBODY WINS A PRIZE!" "WIN A PRETTY PRIZE FOR THE PRETTY LADY!" they shout as you pass by. Eventually you find yourself shelling out absurd amounts of money in order to win an airbrushed picture of a unicorn or a generic CareBear. I still keep some of the triumphs I achieved, including an alien wearing sunglasses and a teddy bear, hidden in a box labeled Ð''keepsakes'.

I hadn't actually thought about the reasons for loving the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival so much until this year. I had always attributed part of my admiration for it as a way to have pride in where I grew up which is something that has been hard for me to do. Evansville has always had a sense of oppression, stagnation and gloominess that feels like a bad case of hiccups. It's not a place to experience new things, new people or even good food. It's a place to see countless mini-malls, suburban cookie cutter houses and abandoned retail stores across from Super-Walmarts and Target Greatlands. But when the first full week of October rolls around, those banalities fade away with the invasion of carnies, candy apples, monster ears and the Sky Diver. In a town where one year seems to fade into the next, even with the change of the seasons, the Fall Festival is a beacon of oddities and indulgence.

This year when October rolled around there were no pronto pups, caramel apples or monster ears and the sounds of carnival folk singing their mantras was nothing but a faint echo in my memories. This was the first time in 27 years that I have not attended the Fall Festival. Every year with out fail I have shown up with an empty stomach, my "Fall Festival Fund" and a sense of wonder and anticipation that only comes to me this first full week of October. For me, this is a magical time full of reflection and change, of which the Fall Festival is the signaling bell. This October, instead of gearing up for the festiva, I found myself avoiding all associations with it. This was both alarming and painful and I realized how much I would miss this yearly ritual of my life in the Midwest. It's a given that attending the festival and gorging on so much food probably isn't the most healthy ritual but despite the intestinal distress, the spiritual and social benefits I gained from this event seem to have touched me more than I had previously thought.

When I think back to my first memory of the Fall Festival there is one particular time that shoots to the forefront of my mind. Even though my mother and father took me to the festival as an infant and toddler I don't remember much of it until a few years after they were divorced. My parents divorced when I was 5. It was messy and I don't know much about it from my father's side. I know he was an alcoholic and I know my mother could be controlling and in the end this resulted in my father disappearing for several years. After awhile, when I got a bit older and could read he began writing me letters from Florida. He worked as a construction worker and would tell me stories about the alligators behind the site and how they would feed them Moonpies. Once he even sent me two dinosaur bones they had uncovered at a building site, of which I still have today. This correspondence went on for several years until I was about 8 years old. I had seen my father once or twice between those three years but it was always in secret when I happened to be staying with my grandmother and he happened to be visiting. My mother was after him for child support and my dad was running from his problems. That same year, after I entered the 3rd grade, I got word that my dad was moving back to Evansville. I didn't quite know how to take this news. I wasn't sure if my dad was a bad guy or a good guy, nor was I sure how to act in front of him. I had heard so many contradicting stories from both my mother and my grandmother that I decided to not think about it. Several weeks went by and I didn't hear anything else about it until the Fall Festival arrived. This, of course, was a grand distraction for me and all I was concerned with was winning a gold fish and eating puppy chow.

One evening I was standing on the sidewalk between the antique shop fronts and food booths Ð'- trying hard to pay attention to where my mom was and to decide whether to ride the carousel or the tin lizzies. "Melissa! Stay with me please!" my mother would bark over the crown while standing in line for some strange thing called