~~She'll loan you her toothbrush, She'll bartend your party~~
EMAIL ME! -- pesadidas[AT]yahoo[DOT]com
HELP ME GET A FREE PHOTO iPOD...PLEASE!!!
Monday, July 07, 2003
| SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER...OR IS IT? Well, just when I was thinking I would finally have some time to relax and unwind, I find out I was wrong. It has been a whirlwind summer so far. I barely had time to get into my "summer mode" before I had to abandon that all and enter "car parking mode" at the PA German Festival. For the last 8 days (should have been 9, but I played hookey to go to NYC), I have spent 8 hours a day telling people where to park their cars. That may not sound like much, but let me tell you, it is quite a task, and there really is a science to the job. The PA German Festival is probably one of the biggest events in Berks County every year--it's DEFINITELY the biggest event in Kutztown each year. On average, we get about 1,500 to 2,500 visitors per day. On a big day, I am sure we have parked at least 3,500 cars. Possibly more. This is no small task in a town that has barely 5,000 people LIVING in it year-round. The Festival has become so huge in the last few years that they now rent a field from a local farmer and use it as a parking lot for the 9 days; this is in addition to the fairgrounds parking lot, the University parking lots across the street, and the vast expanse of land atop the hill at the local armory. The field is the worst place in the world to work parking cars. First of all, allow me to preface this whole rant by saying that when behind the wheel of a car, the majority of society--I'd wager about 85%--becomes somewhat retarded. Then, they decide to go on vacation and visit this Festival. So, people are grumpy because they have to park (what seems to be) far from the festival grounds. They are annoyed because they have sat for 30 minutes in a line of traffic waiting to get to the Festival, and then they are directed to a FIELD to park, so they come FLYING into the field like Mario Andretti, and their vehicles look like the Dukes of Hazard, sailing over the bumps and undulations of the ground. Also, think about all of the farmer's fields you have seen in your lifetime. How many of them have lavish giant shade trees in them? You know how many? ZERO! ZERO many have shade trees! And, of course, as it NEVER fails, we always have SWELTERING, BLISTERING heat for the 9 days of the festival. This year? It had rained EVERY freakin' day since school ended--I began to think that I was living in London, and the beginnings of a deep depression had begun to set in throughout most of Eastern Pennsylvania (the great collective "deep blue funk" of 2003)--but when it came time for the Festival...NOTHING. The week before? Rain every day. First day of the Festival? 90 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The Executive Director of the Festival said it best on one of the last days of the event: "Ben Franklin was a wise man, and he always said, 'God watches over sinners and fools,' and we have here at this Festival one of the BIGGEST collection of sinners and fools in Pennsylvania!" (Not an understatement at all if you know the people who work at this thing!) Then there are the giant groundhog holes in the field--Not to mention the groundhogs themselves. This year, prior to the start of the Fetsival, the farmer had been doing some target practice with the little buggers, and the day that we arrived to mark off the rows in the field, there were about 5 or 6 buzzards chowing down on the remnants of a groundhog. We left that bad boy there. On the next to last day of the Festival, a man got out of his car, which was parked next to the carcass, and said to his wife, "Look, honey...a frog." Ah, yes...the rare Eastern Pennsylvania Field Frog. Large, and furry, the field frog does not need an aquatic environment to survive. The only known mammalian frog in existence, it burrows to make its home, and looks strangely similar to the groundhog...*slaps head* We usually try to mark the groundhog holes with stakes so people know that they are there, but this year, some old dude with a handicapped plate wanted to get out of the field and park inside the fairgrounds--which he could, due to the handicapped plate. After I gave him directions on how to get out of the field, he backed right into the stakes we had marking one set of holes, and snapped them right in half. THEN as he tried to pull away, the half-stake got caught underneath his rear bumper. Undaunted and quite oblivious to his accident, he drove off. I'm quite certain that THAT left a mark... Anyway, the point of all this is that today was my first day after the Festival. Finally, I didn't have to get up early. I slept in a bit, and then did some laundry. ¶ Ξ PDawg Composed at 11:30:00 PM |
