Festival of Grapes in our village.

[oneighty]

It started yesterday just as the rains came. It always rains on and off during the festival. I suspect my Seneca sister-in-law of dancing the night before the festival.

A few years ago the festival was visited by bikers from Canada. There were a lot of them, ladies and gentlemen all. The spent a whole bunch of money in the village. At night they would camp out here and there in the village parks. The police harassed them constantly. They do not come here any more, do not bring their good will and good money to us.

There will be grape stomping contests, grape seed spitting contest (Longest spit) I think. Grape pies will be baked, tasted, judged and sold. Fermented grapes (Wine) too will be sampled.

In the central village park vendors of all sorts set up tents, they sell things. Often there are nice things to buy (Bring lotta money).

In the area of the rides and joints there will be a beer tent if the sponsors can afford the insurance. A few years ago there was some "Bad beer" sold there. Lotta people got very ill.

Tomorrow (Sunday) there will be a pitiful attempt at a parade. There are no more school marching bands or fireman's drum and bugle corps like there was years ago. The Shriners too used to field a large marching band. I guess the schools ran out of money for the fun things, volunteer firemen too. Maybe the Shriners just lost interest. It was a Lotta fun years ago.

One year when I was a little 'Eddie' I got a job in a "Joint" setting up the fake milk jugs that one tried to knock over with a base ball (Hard ball). My class mates gathered round the joint laughing at me.

I think they were jealous cause I had a job.

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