Insanity, I Tell You

I'm back in Morton, Illinois. See it is time for their big annual Pumpkin Festival. According to statistics this town packages over 85% of the world's canned pumpkin. Dang that is a lot of pumpkin, or at least until you learn that most of the world does not have access to canned pumpkin.

The parade is one of the highlights of the festival every year for most people. In fact it is so popular that although the parade does not happen until Saturday morning, already by midnight last night an estimated 1/6 of the parade route had been staked out by people. There are lawn chairs marking and reserving people's preferred viewing areas. Insanity, I tell you. (Although, I was compelled to put out my own chairs to make sure I get a prime spot for all the candy throwing and politician heckling.)

But to a few of us the parade is not the highlight of the grand festivities. No it is a little spot on the corner of First Street and Adams, right behind the basketball courts where I played as a child. Yes, my friends, that is where the crazy rat spinning game has been set up for years. For those who know nothing of the crazy rat spinning game, it works like this.... A giant spinning wheel is set up on a table, similar to a roulette wheel. That wheel is marked off in ten to fifteen different colors, as well as each color has a small hole in the board. After people place down their quarters on their choice color, the carnie places a rat under a bucket in the center of the wheel, and proceeds to spin the wheel. The bucket is then lifted, and the fun begins, as the dizzy and confused rat heads towards one of the holes on the color wheel. And if he enters the colored hole you picked, you win a prize. Now that, my friends, is pure entertainment.

So, if you are looking for me this weekend, I should be along a parade route, enjoying some pumpkin pie or an elephant ear, or most likely betting on crazy rats.