Ch. 1b - Of Pop and Popcorn

Saturday was the big day, the day I had been anticipating all week, the day that I was sure would define my stay in Ohio. Mitch and I would be conquering the Marion Popcorn Festival, "the largest popcorn festival in the world"! I love the slice of life and livestock that is a good state fair and it had been a few years since I had been to one.. I was primed! Well, Saturday arrived and I have to say.. It was sadly disappointing. Maybe it suffered from my high expectations (clearly it did), but if this is the biggest popcorn festival, I'd hate to see the smallest! There was hardly any freaking popcorn at the Popcorn Festival for crying out loud!

I mean, we took it for what is was and still had fun, but we only had about two hours of fun.. and that was stretching it. It was just a totally generic street fair that could have been in any town U.S.A. and with any theme randomly attached to it. There was nothing that made it special. Anybody remember the Grady Squash Festival from the overlooked movie classic, "Doc Hollywood"? Well, this is what I was expecting.. this is what I wanted. A genuine old-fashioned Middle-America small town festival with lots of local color. There should have been all kinds of popcorn exhibits and popcorn related products for sale, there should have been a popcorn ride, there should have been people dressed in giant popcorn costumes singing popcorn songs, etc..What we got was three downtown Marion blocks of standard deep-fried fair food, rickety fold-up rides, and barking carnies. They didn't even have deep-fried popcorn (a so-obvious-it's-brilliant idea Margaret had).. sheesh!

We did eat our way through there, nonetheless.. I got kettle corn (the most "exotic" popcorn they had), a corn dog, and a pork sandwich... and a bison burger. That's right, three different types of meat. Don't judge me. The funniest/grossest/most awesome food item we saw there, though, was the above pictured "PorkTato" Fries. Say PorkTato out loud and you will giggle. Neither of us could bring ourselves to actually eat the thing but Mitch did have some other kind of grease and fries combination bowl.. worst part is, being a future coroner of America, he knows exactly how that will look on the inside. And yet he smiles... he's a strange man.

Pop-quiz: Quick, what do you say when you want a brown carbonated beverage?

I say coke.. any regular, brown-colored cola product is coke to me, even when it is not actually Coke. Not soda, not cola, and certainly not pop. Well, people in Ohio say pop, and at the popcorn festival I ordered a "pop" for the first time and it felt weird! It was literally hard for my brain to make my mouth say it. I was doing my best to blend in, though... somehow I think I still stood out like a sore city boy.

Now it is Monday, my last day in Columbus. I am doing laundry and looking up barbecue joints in Kansas City, MO, the next stop on my trip. Jesse told me I have to get a "burnt-end" sandwich, and I can't see why I wouldn't.

Ch. 1a - Working The Land

Now I have arrived in Columbus and for the last few days I have just been takin' her easy mostly. Unwinding and decompressing from all that pent up Jersey rage. On Labor Day, Mitch (who is my friend who lives here - he cuts up dead people for a living and just passed his final medical licensing test, woo!) and I went apple pickin'. The orchard was in Palookaville, or at least you couldn't prove otherwise to this city boy. I mostly ate, Mitch mostly picked, and together we stole one Pink Lady apple that was not supposed to be picked yet. Yep, we are bad dudes.

Then we stopped by the farmers' market on the way out, which was again quite the novelty to me. I pointed and took pictures of the natives and their quaint traditional ways. Mitch was *ahem* excited by the butternut squash. Excuse me while I whip this out!

The reddish apples were sweet, the greenish ones were perfect for pie.. So that is what we decided must be done. The next day, while Mitch was at work, I was a good wife and made a genuine from-scratch, homemade apple pie. I was particularly proud of the crust... deeelicious. Check it out:

Otherwise I am just hanging out, exploring the city, chillin' like a villain. This weekend is the famous Marion Popcorn Festival.. I am told corn is the thing to eat here (I assume in all its forms) and I am looking forward to it. Popcornfestival.com

Snow and THE Ohio trip

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! I think it is probably my favorite holiday, if I could call any of them favorites. In general, holidays suck. Nevertheless, I found myself driving some 9 hours each way to Columbus, OH. This was my first time in Ohio, where both sides of my family are actually from. My friend Mitch, seen here in front of his house (clearly very happy to see me), is a pathology resident at THE Ohio State University. That's right, THE. If you don't say the "The" they will yell at you. Silly and pretentious? Yes. But the campus is nice and Mitch likes it there. He cuts up dead people for a living and gave me a tour of the morgue. I saw a split second of my first real dead person.. I saw something bright red that was probably some sort of guts and decided that was quite enough.

The drive went smoothly and surprisingly quickly. Along the way I made my first ever snowman at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. He isn't very big, doesn't have a face, and is really pretty pathetic, but I love the poor bastard and was sorry to leave him behind. I'm sure I'll have more practice making snowmen in the coming months. Yesterday I woke up to snow falling outside my window. Sounds romantic when I put it that way, but I wasn't thinking romance at the time. I was just hoping it would be over by the time I got out of the shower. It was.. but it did stick a little and I took a picture of my car's first snow.The snow really is pretty to look at, and is still sorta a novelty to me, but I can't say I am looking forward to too much of it. It's cold! Although, I did get gore-tex shoes and feel I am now ready to kick winter's ass.