Monday, July 20, 2015

'Ring, Ring the Banjo' (Stephen Foster, 1851) - part two



We arrived a week before the festival officially began. Tony, our next-door neighbour, came even earlier. 


Jams, scheduled and spontaneous, start before noon and continue ’til late. Sometimes I fall asleep to a musical lullaby. 

‘Get you ready,
There’s a meetin' here tonight.
Come along,
There’s a meetin' here tonight’.

(Traditional Southern Spiritual) 



Evening shows are held in front of the little grandstand. Country, bluegrass, folk, gospel, traditional.



Although primarily for the enchanting dulcimer - an instrument dating from at least the Middle Ages - there are instruments of all kinds.








Mel holds a hurdy gurdy. You can hear one on his website:

http://hurdygurdycrafters.com/index.asp?fmt=large


Where goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens and cows are exhibited at county fairs, jams jam and music classes overflow ('Surviving a jam session'; 'Learn to play the Blues!'; 'How bowing affects jigs'; 'Instant music with harmonica').


I pose (some girlfriends from my irresponsible past would doubtless say appropriately) in front of the swine barn.


In the dairy barn, piano awaits player.




As much as the music, it’s people, faces, stories: 'I worked two jobs for forty years. I ain't working no more'.


And food. For the second year running, Don & Jode take me to the Evart Moose Lodge for Friday night ‘fish fry’, beer and DJ. As well, they’ve been stuffing me with my favourite, never-in-Toronto, fare, including steaks and homemade strawberry shortcake.



However, there are also seductive stalls, some staffed by local service groups. Barbecued chicken dinner $8. Not a salad in sight, well, hardly.


Evart's high school football team sells sundaes - two monstrous scoops of ice-cream, strawberries or fudge - for $3.50. The team needs funds to improve on last season’s two and seven record (main competitor, the Aggies from population 345 Beale City).









Meanwhile, the music goes on and on … until this morning.


Generous hosts Don & Jode (who’ve been playing dulcimers and giving dance lessons, while I idly wander) stand beside my suddenly, very flat former home. Old trailers and luxury RVs and the 'primitives' are on the move, some along more summer roads to the next festival.

It has been a wonderful fortnight in rural Michigan, so different from the heart of my sprawling city.

‘I shall wander many a mile, 
And bethink me all the while 
Of merry times that we have had together 
With my banjo on my knee’. 

‘With My Banjo on My Knee’ (S.J. Charles, 1859)

Friday, July 17, 2015

'Ring, Ring the Banjo' (Stephen Foster, 1851) - part one



I’m at a music festival in Evart, Michigan. Thus, the post’s title, borrowed from American composer Stephen Foster.


The population of Evart’s about 1,700. Logging forests, on which early prosperity was based, still begin at town’s end.

Times were good for a hundred years or so … 


 … Main Street bustled and impressive houses were built.




Last year, I described in my Michigan blog how profitability petered out:


Evart, as so many small towns, lost jobs and people moved on. That’s not to say town and Central Michigan lack charm and interest.


Carriages are often seen as many farms roundabout are owned by Amish.



Representations of traditional quilts feature on some local barns.



Nearby Paris celebrates its own six metre (twenty foot) tower made by a 1980 high school welding class.


There are curious buildings to be examined, This onetime hotel with its ancient sign is in the town of Marion …


… a, to put it kindly, 'store' in Chase …



 … and some seriously quirky local architecture. Note top dog pillar.


Cemeteries are so often an education and delight. 

Ebenezer Partridge fought with Company I of the 67th Ohio Infantry in the U.S. Civil war. As was common, the regiment lost more to disease (151) than to combat (142).

Ebenezer shares Evart’s moody and beautifully maintained cemetery with those - using a now unfashionable word - whose Christian names were ‘Solomon’, ‘Hiram’, ’Able’, ‘Vearl' and ‘Orsemus'.


Some cemetery residents doubtless tried their luck in local streams, rivers and lakes. Nowadays, visiting fishermen can down a beer at Racks. Sign at top left explains.


This notice worried me until reassured that ‘Canadian Crawlers’ are not impoverished Canadian tourists with a seventy-six cent dollar, but worms used for bait.

And Evart’s economy is also boosted by a yearly musical barn-burner (figuratively speaking) with thousands of participants.


Here’s where I’m living during the festival. Thanks to friends Don & Jode hauling accommodation for me, I am ‘Tenting on the Old Campground’ (Walter Kittredge, 1864), well, actually the Evart fairground.


This is my unpopped-up popup. With awning, here it is now.


My 'tent', next to Don & Jode’s trailer, has a comfortable bed, running water and electricity. Showers and toilet are but thirty second stroll away in communal washrooms. 

In fact, my conditions are luxurious in comparison with some festival goers who dwell in what, on the fairground map, is disturbingly referred to as the ‘primitive camping area’. 


This has me so worried, I decide (early, when no frightening primitives are up) to check on the undoubtedly barbarous conditions.


However, it seems ‘primitive’ is relative term and that occupants do have access to facilities allowing for ablutions and even, I’m told, hot food.

I next explore the more upmarket neighbourhood.



I’ve become rather fond of the second trailer, a 1965 Fleetwood, owned by an interesting and affable chap, Luke …


… who poses for me in his University of Michigan t-shirt.


The Osceola County Fairground, home of the local football team, awaits the melodic hordes. More in my next post.