Market Days

This is a view of the creek during the early part of the storm....
Below is a shot (same view, ever-so-slightly zoomed in) just after the storm.



Tropical Storm Hanna, while not the huge weather event we expected, was just bad enough to cancel one of my favorite things: Mathews Market Days.

Market Days is always held the first Friday and Saturday after Labor Day. It’s two fun-filled days of funnel cakes, french fries, kettle corn, crab cakes, iced tea, barbecue, funnel cakes, kettle corn, french fries and-–oops, I got hung up there for a minute. The food is great, but there are also art exhibits and vendors selling everything from flags to pottery to wood carvings to french fries to kettle corn to funnel cakes.

The food is great, did I mention that?

There are three things I love about Market Days, and this time I am not going to mention the french fries, funnel cakes and kettle corn. Seriously, I’m not.

No, the three things I love about Market Days are the rides, the Saturday night street dance, and the opportunity to see old friends.

My children love the rides, even though quite honestly they are not the most sophisticated—or fun--rides in the world….There’s usually a scrambler, a swirling strawberry (and why in the world any human being would pay money to get dizzy in a swirling strawberry is beyond me), a slide, a moon bounce and some swings. They’re those rides operated by folks who look like they’ve just been released –or escaped from—jail. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Well, escaping from jail is bad, but I have nothing against newly-released prisoners, it just seems odd to me that these rides tend to attract convicted felons who evidently haven’t seen a dentist in a decade or more. Not that I am one to talk about being a frequent visitor to the dentist. And to be clear, I have nothing against convicted felons. I do, however, have an issue or two with dentists. Big issues. But of course this has absolutely nothing to do with what I was originally talking about.

The rides are great, but the most fun to me is the Saturday night street dance, or as my little sister calls it, the barn dance, even though it is not held in a barn, and there is no barn anywhere in a 2-mile radius. There are characters there who look like they should be in a barn, but this is not a barn dance. They block off the street and people mill around or sit and listen to music. This is where I usually see people I haven’t seen in a month of Sundays, which in case you didn’t know is a long time, and so much longer than a month of Mondays or Thursdays, for example.

This year, the storm cancelled all of Saturday’s festivities and sufficiently deterred vendors and attendees on Friday, even though the weather was cooperating. I went for a bit Friday morning, but it just didn’t feel the same. Little Sister drove here all the way from Richmond for the so-called barn dance that never happened.

Oh, and the worst part of all? Most of The Food People who normally line up and down the street didn’t show up because of the probability of rain.

So here I sit with no kettle corn, no french fries and no funnel cakes. No iced tea, no barbecue, no swirling strawberries, and no barn dance. I do still have a Baby Sister hanging around though. I think I'll go aggravate her.

There's always the Urbanna Oyster Festival in November. Guess I'll get my french fries and barn dance then.