The Fall Festival - Day 197 - Daily Haiku - Cookeville, Tennessee

The very idea of Southern Rock Fish and Fries cracked me up, and from Indiana???
Since when is Indiana in the South??? ;-)

The Fall Festival
in Cookeville, seemed a great time
had by all present

Fall Festivals and County Fairs are a fact of life in American cities, and in fact, in may other parts of the world as well.

My favorite as a kid, though we were only rarely in New Mexico at the right time to attend, was the Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial, then incorrectly called the Indian Ceremonial, which was and is an intertribal gathering of First Nation ceremonial dancers, and is truly an amazing experience for all ages.

Held each year in August, In Gallup, New Mexico, where my mother's parents lived when I was a kid, the tribal dancers are second to none, and give a welcome glimpse into their culture rarely granted to outsiders. All of the dancers are amazing, but my personal favorites were always the Zuni and the White Mountain Apache.

Definitely a do-not-miss festival for anyone interested in real Native American culture.

Growing up in California, I occasionally visited the Los Angeles County Fair, which, being held at Pomona Fairgrounds, well east of where we lived in Monterey Park, which was itself considerably east of the downtown area and Los Angeles city proper, seemed far too remote to even be in the county . . . yet it was, and is.

It's hard to conceive of a single county the size of Rhode Island, but it is that as well . . . the most populous county in the United States, with 88 incorporated cities, each with its own mayor, 140 unincorporated communities, and incredibly diverse culturally and geographically, it also boasts some of the largest wilderness areas surrounded by the urban and suburban landscape.

One of my favorite memories of Luxembourg was of their fall festival, which I passed regularly and finally stopped in to visit one day, though for the life of me I don't recall what it was actually called.

Hopefully one of these days I'll find the photos from that time, as I didn't have those scanned in before my marriage broke up, so they went on the back burner, and are now in a box. Somewhere. Along with a huge percentage of my other belongings. Ah, well.

But the fall festival in Cookeville was a gem. A friend at work told me I should go, and that I'd really enjoy it, even if most of the music was country, which is not my favorite genre.

So I called a girlfriend to see if she wanted to join me, and we walked from her house, which is only a few blocks from where it was held . . . and baked, as it was 95 degrees at the time. ;-)

But we had a great time, and the music was not country after all, but mostly rock. The final band we heard was an Eagles cover band, who were actually quite good, but the band before was even better, with the lead singer channeling his inner Stevie Ray Vaughn, which was seriously awesome. We had a blast.

This post, and all those from now until the end of 2018, I am dedicating to the work of #tarc and #yah, aka @rhondak's nonprofit dog rescue and @sircork's charity @youarehope.

Half of all the liquid proceeds earned from my posts will be evenly split between the two organizations.

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