THE AMERICANS LOVE THEIR FESTIVALS … and we are not just talking about parades, picnics, live music and bouncy castles. They have such serious matters on their minds as how to transform themselves into Superman, catch rattlesnakes, encourage their cows to produce prize-winning sculptures and listen to music underwater.
Kevin Pilley starts off the discussion by addressing the perpetual appeal of the Man of Steel – well-timed as Superman has just gone into battle with Batman in Hollywood’s newest blockbuster, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – and Sally Montgomery joins him in describing some of her native country’s other funky, indeed, often downright-bizarre, annual events.
Superman Celebration in Metropolis
You’ll find Superman this June, says Kevin, not flying faster than a speeding bullet over a major US metropolis but queuing up in the small riverside town of Metropolis, Illinois to take part in a lookalike competition.
Appropriately garbed in red wellies, with Y-fronts over their tights, the contestants can begin their quest for recognition as the bullet-proof hero by standing in admiration of the 22ft-tall bronze statue of the Man of Steel located in the town’s Superman Square. At its base is the stirring inscription ‘Truth, Justice – the American Way’
“It’s our second statue,” a lady from the Chamber of Commerce told me, “the first one was fibreglass. People thought he had big feet and looked like Prince Charles.”
The town once paid a different person $500 every year to be the boy from Smallsville , Kansas. The search for the official Superperson was an international one. The organizers received hundreds of photos from people who aspired to be a very muscular , bullet-proof fictional character with no visible genital definition.
But before I could hand in my C V or say, “I have travelled twenty million light years from my home. I look upon my powers as a gift. Not mine but to anyone who needs them“ and ”All friends and heroes are welcome at the Fortress of Solitude “, the lady from the Chamber told me that the position had been permanently filled. The official Metropolis ‘Superman’ is a handsome , buff template Texan, Josh Boltinghouse. He is on a rolling contract.
“Our first Superman was the local Baptist preacher,” explained the Chamber lady. Everyone wants to be Superman. We used to get applications from everywhere. Even Japan.”
Nearby, there’s a statue of Superman’s main squeeze, Lois Lane – in fact, it’s said to bring you good luck if you stroke her or if you have your photo taken peering between Superman’s legs.
And when you tire of such personal tributes, there’s plenty to do – attend autograph sessions, meet writers and actors, view films in the Art-Deco Baymont Theater, enjoy a Super-Beautiful Baby Contest and a massive meal of peel-and-eat shrimp, catfish and bourbon steak sandwiches at Fat Edd’s Roadhouse, and enter the Heroes and Villains Costume Contest. I even met the winged Insect Queen, General Zod, green-skinned Braniac and several Incredible Hulks.
There was even more to be learned in the town’s Superman Museum, which displays such things as posters, breakaway shirts, ray guns, the bald wigs worn by the Mole People in the first movie and the suit worn by George Reeve in the first TV episodes of the Adventures of Superman.
“Superman was the granddaddy of them all … the bluechip of all super heroes and all collectibles,” said museum curator, Jim Hambrick, a former house wares salesman from California. “Remember that Batman came 30 years after him,” he added. “Superman is to Americans what the gods were to the Greeks. He helps us recapture our childhood; he stands for times gone by; he also stands for important values.”
Saying truthfully, “I have to go” – in a way that suggested that the fate of the world was at stake and that I had a meteor to stop – I set off in search of the restroom. The Superman Festival is held annually in Metropolis , Illinois in June.
THE GREAT SALT-LICK ART AUCTION
It’s not just super heroes who can make their mark on the world. In Baker City, Oregon, it could be a deer, an elk or even your pet cow, goat or sheep. Their fame all depends on the creativity of their tongues.
Noting the interesting abstract shapes these bovine artistes created from the large blocks of salt left by farmers for them to lick, a local businessman, Whit Deschner, had a brainstorm – why not auction off these art works to raise money for charity, specifically Parkinson’s Disease, with which he is afflicted?
“I was sitting on the porch of a friend’s cabin watching the shape of a salt-lick the deer had worked on,” he recalls, “and I began thinking it sure beat some of the sculptures in parks and in front of building … sculptures that some artist had been paid a six figure for.”
The result has been ten years of festive September Saturdays, when collectors circle and evaluate the ‘works of art’ and then bid on them, with special prizes given in the past to the sculpture that looks the most like actor Michael J Fox, also affected by Parkinson’s Disease, and for a new Purple Cow poem (the original reading: “I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one. But I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather see than be one.”). Some of the money raised has gone toward the construction of a 6ft-tall bronze salt-lick statue for the town, now known as Salt Lick City. The Great Salt Lick Art Auction is held in Baker City, Oregon, in September.
MOONING FOR THE AMTRAK PASSENGERS
On the second Saturday of July, in Laguna Niguel, Orange Country, California, thousands of people gather outside the Mugs Away Saloon to drop their pants, raise their skirts and ‘moon’ at speeding Amtrak trains.
According to the organisers, the usually-packed trains even slow down so passengers can enjoy the show fully. “Over the past couple of years,” said a spokesman, “it has turned into much more than just a mooning … now it is a festival similar to a Mardi Gras Celebration. The street is lined with all types of vendors, party RVs and hundreds of people.”
Between trains, he added, “you may see an impromptu wet T-shirt contest, girls getting naked in blow-up pools and lots of flashing for beads.”
THE UNDERWATER MUSIC FESTIVAL
If you want to make waves as a musician, the place to be in early July is Looe Key Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. For the past 31 years, divers and musicians have flocked to the Keys to make beautiful music underwater – the sound travels much farther than on land and is apparently particularly ethereal – and to raise awareness of the only living coral reef in North America.
From 10am to 2pm, the music, broadcast by a local radio station, is piped in underwater by special speakers suspended beneath boats. Quirkily-costumed musicians, divers and mermaids then join in on whimsical instruments created by local craftsmen, with such appropriate selections as the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and Jimmy Buffett’s Fins, as well as the film music from Jaws and Jumping Jack Fish and Honky Conch Woman. One year, the theme was EEL-ection Antic starring such ‘special guests’ as Barackuda Obama, Hillary Clin-Tuna and John McClam and, in another year, there were appearances from those reef rockstars Paul McCarpney and Ringo Starfish.
THE GREAT PUMPKIN IN GOURD’S OWN COUNTRY
Cinderella wasn’t the only one to make good use of a pumpkin – Americans (and increasingly we Brits) have been sculpting them into Halloween fantasies for years. And now there are major pumpkin festivals throughout the world. But, by producing 1.5 billion tonnes of pumpkins every year, the USA is truly gourd’s own country.
Rhode Island claims to have grown the largest pumpkin, weighing in at 2,009 lbs, and Morton, Illinois, says it’s the country’s Pumpkin Capital because the local Libby/Nestle’s plant produces 85 per cent of the country’s tinned pumpkin. It has celebrated with a Pumpkin Festival for the past 50 years, during which two tonnes of pumpkins are projected by slingshots and cannons annually.
Half Moon Bay, California, has gone one better – it claims to be The World’s Pumpkin Capital, adding to its boast by exhibiting The World’s Largest Pumpkin Sculpture and staging a two-day all-bells-and-whistles Art and Pumpkin Festival (on October 15-16 this year). Everyone from tiny tots to ‘ghoulish grandmas and grandpas’ is invited to come in costume. There will be pumpkin pie eating and pumpkin carving competitions, gourd-inspired arts and crafts and live music. Who could ask for anything more?
Colorado also considers itself the headquarters of ‘pumpkin chunkin’ or long-distance pumpkin throwing. One of those big orange babies was recently projected 3,279.62 feet in Aurora’s Aradahoe Park, while another was shot 4,787 feet from an air cannon. On October 24, Laconia, New Hampshire, hopes to break the world record for the number of jack o’lanterns displayed. The same weekend, the Extreme Chunkin’ World Championship will be held on the Magic Mile Motor Speedway in Loudon, New Hampshire.
DON’T DUCK OUT OF DUCT TAPE
You might think of sticky, incredibly useful Duct Tape in purely utilitarian terms, but for the good folk of Avon, Ohio, the multi-coloured tape is a creative marvel to be saluted by a three day event. It’s called The Avon Duck Tape Festival in tribute to “the original brand of Duct Tape” which is illustrated by, of course, a jaunty cartoon duck logo. Showcasing crafts and fashions inspired by the splendid tape, it also features parades, music and food.
SNAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL
Although not exactly a festival, The Rattlesnake Roundup acquires a life – or a death – of its own in a number of US states. Oklahoma hosts five of the most-important rattlesnake hunts, with the small town of Okeene in the north-western part of the state on Highway 51 credited with staging the first. A farmer started it all. To protect his cattle.
A tumbledown old-timers’ domino parlour in Okeene becomes the headquarters of the International Association of Snakehunters as people from as far away as California, Illinois and Canada roll up to register for the event. Meanwhile, the regulars hang out in the only saloon for 60 miles, Earl’s Galvanized Palace, and compare snake stories.
My mentor, said Kevin, was Peppy Wenglarz , three fingers short of a right hand after a reptilian altercation a few years back. He guided me through the rudiments of rattlesnake wrangling. Also of use are six dollars to participate, a weird laugh and a personality combining an abnormal love of wearing welding gloves with a pronounced death wish.
For, according to Peppy, a western diamondback can strike half its body length and still kill you two hours after being decapitated. The biggest snake he ever caught was 86 inches, but the eastern diamondback can be more than 8ft long.
It is legal to harvest western diamondback, timber and prairie rattlensnakes. The season lasts from March to September, beginning in New Mexico and ending, five states later, in Pennsylvania, with Sweetwater, Texas, attracting the most participants and Waurika, Oklahoma, claiming the largest haul (5,352lbs one year). The biggest prize ( $150) goes to the biggest snake. Sixty-eight inches is competitive.
As trials of manhood go, it appears that one day’s rattlesnake bagging is worth a week’s wheat bailing. “It gives us something else to talk about apart from the weather, women and wheat,” local cowboy Rick Reames told me. “We got nothing to do around here apart from count our cattle, have run-ins with the highway police or dream up songs and nice things to rhyme with pick-up”.
