Posted 10/31/2007

BIG DOINGS AT THE APPLE FESTIVAL

Suddenly there was a terrible, ear-splitting shriek. Everyone jumped in alarm at the inhuman, wounded-hyena-like screech. All eyes fastened on a very heavy woman sitting in a lawn chair watching the parade. But the sound wasn't coming from her. It was being made by the wrenching, slow-motion collapse of her aluminum chair.

It seemed to take ten minutes for her chair to sink down into a flat position on the sidewalk, leaving the plump lady spread-eagled on her back, unable to move. I went to help her, but was bumped out of the way by Bruce the Banker, a man who could take a deposit as well as any man in America. As solicitous as a funeral director, he inquired into her well-being. She indicated that she was unhurt, just startled. As she began to redden with acute embarrassment, Bruce yelled, "They sure don't make these suckers like they used to!"

As we heaved her up on her feet, she gave Bruce a very grateful glance and tottled off.

It was just one more peculiar adventure of the kind that occurred with great regularity at the Barry (Illinois) Annual Apple Festival.

Barry is a rural town of 1,400 nice people located just 19 miles east of Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain lived, piloted and wrote on the Mississippi River. He probably could have added a volume or two of humorous stories had he mosied across the river and encountered the colorful folks of Barry.

He would have observed that the population of Barry triples if you count all the hogs. But the hogs are gone now, all living in condominiums where few hooves touch the ground or roll in the mud before being shipped off to the slaughterhouse. I believe that, in Barry, the term "hog heaven" refers to a big muddy wallow, the kind that doesn't exist anymore.

In Barry everyone reads The Paper to catch up on the local news. As odd as that sounds, the name of the Barry newspaper is "The Paper." When you work sixteen-hour days harvesting corn, it's too complicated to have to remember something like The Barry Gazette or The Barry Bugle.

The Paper doesn't print any real hard news. It hasn't ever won a Pulitzer Prize, or even entered the contest. The latest front page shows Mayor Syrcle holding up two large squash he grew in his garden. That was the town's big event that week.

The name "The Paper" suits those who call their animals "the dog" or "the cat." City folks who have converted their pets into children tend to shrink in horror upon learning that animals are often unnamed. As a shocked New York lady once exclaimed, "How could I make appointments for Fifi at her psychologist or personal trainer if she didn't have a name? You can't just up and take ‘the dog' to places like that."

Of course, Barry doesn't have any personal trainers for people -- let alone pets. And there aren't any psychologists, either. The churches take care of all that stuff. They tend to prescribe Jesus instead of Ritalin.

One of the unusual people who grew up in Barry was named Barbara (which means "strange one"), a red-headed Scorpio who made the monumental leap from rural Barry to New York City. On any given day, the number of people who ride the Big Apple's "A" train than outnumber the residents of Barry (even if you count the former hog population).

Barbara was some dish when I met her 32 years ago in New York, and still is. She's maintained a great attachment to Barry, even though we live in the East now. In the past two years, she's had me renovating her family homestead in Barry, which was built in the 1890s by her great-grandfather, James Madison Doran. (Actually, she does the renovating and I do the paying.)

Great-Grandfather Doran was Barry's veterinarian. But back then, I understand, he saw as many people as horses and cows. Doc Doran treated people in his office, and animals in his barn, which we have now converted into a big garage.

We found the desk where J.M. kept his pistol. Barbara says it was to put down horses which were too far gone, but I thought it was for farmers who got too far behind on their bills. We found an old ledger where J.M. had written down "deadbeat" next to several names. In any event, nobody ever took the cat or the dog to see J.M., him being a cow and horse man and all.

Although the Apple Festival takes place in October, it was hot as blue blazes this year when we went to the park to see the beauty contests. Every little town in Pike County elects a festival queen. Then they add baby contests, child contests and Junior Miss contests. Now there are "Little Prince" contests so that boys will not feel snubbed. Apparently New York-style equal opportunity has come to Barry.

The really big event used to be the crowning of the Pike County Pork Queen, an event that also tended to shock New Yorkers, who think the word "pig" refers to a visagely challenged woman. But now that the porkers are gone, the big event is the crowning of the Apple Festival Queen. But times do not change very much. As well as being pretty, the contestants are all well-groomed and well-fed. None has ever heard of anorexia or seems likely to.

The winners of all the beauty contests ride in the big afternoon parade. Trouble is, they're perched in the back of pickup trucks, so they ride facing backwards instead of forward. It's very difficult to get a decent snapshot with the sun reflecting off the camera's viewer. Too often my camera mistakenly focused in on a big behind or the name of the truck. I tried to get a shot of one local princess, but all I got was a derriere perched over "Ford 250."

There were some very good high school bands playing and dancing up a storm in the 92-degree heat. There were one or two ambulances standing by, but these farm kids are tough. Nobody fainted. If this had been New York, some lawyer would have sued the town for subjecting children to cruel and unusual punishment.

The park was all decked out like a huge carnival. There were rides, games and food, food, food. Barry is really a big eating town. The Pike County folks were scarfing down hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, pork chops, potato salad, apple sauce and some strange mixture called "Maid Rites." Those were the appetizers.

The heavy-eating folks dipped generously into the homemade pies, homemade ice cream, cakes, cookies and something called funnel cakes. Forget saturated fats and non-saturated fats. When you eat funnel cakes, you enter into serious grease territory. For those who were still hungry, there were candy apples, popcorn and all kinds of candies.

After seeing all the sweets being eaten, a new dentist who specialized in preventive dentistry threw in his lead bib and left town mumbling to himself. To some of these folks, good gum health means a new kind of chewing gum from Wrigley.

If you make your way though all the crowds and booths to the southeast corner of the Park, you will see a huge decommissioned army tank, painted fighting green and sporting a huge cannon on its bulbous snout. And crawling all over the fearsome monster were little girls and boys yelling, "Bang!" and "Boom!" You could just feel those tots ingesting the kinds of killer instincts which will make them solid candidates for our future volunteer army.

Barry is a very patriotic town. Every house seems to boast a flag on its front porch. It's pretty well split between Republicans and Democrats. Back in the 1880s, when the Wabash Cannonball still ran through town, the two leading parties were the "Wets" and the "Dries." Back then, every four years the town changed administrations. When the "Dries" got elected, all the saloons in town were closed down. When the "Wets" got elected, all the saloons opened up again. Today the town is pretty well balanced, there being as many churches as saloons in town.

But teetotalism still has some of the town in its grips. A few years ago, we had a wine and cheese party at the house for some of the younger folks. When Barbara's Aunt Ruby heard about it, she was so furious that she cut us off her homemade preserves list. She had been sending us raspberry preserves every fall before we fell out of "God's good graces and into the wine bottle," as she told it around town.

On Festival Sunday, all the Protestant churches combine into one community service at the First Christian Church. This year, the church was only half-full, seeing as the whole downtown of Barry had filled up with a display of antique cars from all over the country.

But the Methodist lady minister preached a nice children's sermon, the Baptist minister railed about Jeremiah, and the Nazarene minister hosted the singing and announcements. The only odd note was an announcement by the Baptist minister of a big "Right to Life Rally" being held at 2:30 p.m. in neighboring Pittsfield. He urged everyone to go, but didn't get many takers. I knew the 200 beautiful antique cars exhibited at the Apple Festival were going to make everyone act like Planned Parenthoodies.

The town was really jam-packed as we left the church. People had come from miles around to see the antique cars, which were all beautifully displayed. The paint jobs were mirror-like in reflecting the bright sun. Each car had its hood up, looking every bit like huge fish about to devour prey. Under the raised hoods, the engines glistened as if they had never been driven, only shined up every morning and night. The owners sat around their darlings in camp chairs, ready to jump up and do a little bragging to every visitor who hesitated a little going by.

There were so many bearded and whiskered bikers, you'd have thought you were hosting a Beat Generation reunion at Enrico's Coffeehouse in San Francisco. I saw almost as many tattoos as there were in the "tattoo convention" held at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City a couple of years ago. One lady had tattooed cross-stitches down both her arms, looking every bit like she had just stepped of the set of The Munsters.

There was another big group, bow hunters who were about to tramp the cornfields looking to knock off a deer or two. All the saloons in town had big "Welcome Deer Hunters" signs out front. With all the lethal arrows on hand, you'd think a saloon was the last place that a hunter should be. Last year a hunter drank so much Jack Daniels that he broke his arm falling out of a blind.

Even though Barry was invaded by a lot of strange interlopers, it was easy to pick out the natives. By comparison, they looked pretty normal, sitting in the firehouse eating fried chicken, potato salad, beans and applesauce, with apple cake for dessert.

That Barry is alive is a miracle all by itself. Like most farm towns, Barry was built to serve the family farm. But after 1880, people began to sell their small spreads to large, corporate farms.

It started way back when a woman instructed her daughter, "Never marry a man who keeps cows." She meant that a woman couldn't even go to town doings on Saturday night because the cows required milking twice a day, seven days a week. One thing led to another and soon women were refusing to marry any kind of farmer, whether he had cows or not. You youngsters may not believe it, but "24/7" was invented by the family farm generations.

As the family farms began to disappear, so did all the farm towns that served them, including Barry. The negative progress was terrible. The movie house closed down. (I was there the year the marquee fell off the abandoned theater.) Then Ownby's Department Store closed up. The drugstore disappeared, along with the town doctor. Soon most of the town center was boarded up.

The biggest blow was when the Wabash built new tracks to the north, so they could bypass Barry. It looked as if Barry would disappear like all the farming ghost towns in Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.

But a miraculous opportunity (some might say divine intervention) arose in the state capital of Springfield. A bunch of politicians decided to build a four-lane divided highway between Springfield and Quincy. Then they decided to get the highway classified as a federal interstate highway. But the Feds said no. Interstates must live up to their name and travel between states.

So the good folks in Springfield made a deal with politicians in Missouri and agreed to extend the new interstate all the way from Springfield, Illinois to Hannibal, Missouri. (The move was greased by a bevy of well-heeled cement contractors.) Which meant Interstate 72 would pass just north of Barry.

Well, a very smart Barry banker, John Shover, persuaded the Barry Town Council to extend Barry's city limits to the other side of the highway. Shover believed "If you build it, they will come." Especially if Springfield agreed to a put an interstate exit at Mile Marker 20 (which just happened to be located inside Barry's new city limits).

And come they did. All kinds of businesses located at the Barry exit. Where once there was farm land, today there's a meat packer, a truck tire retreader, a Wendy's, and two gas stations. Banker Shover tells me that the town's tax revenues are now greater than in the days when the town was booming. And the population of 1,400 is the same as it was in back in 1880.

The town looks different, though. The town center still has a lot of abandoned buildings. And where there once were horses and buggies parked in front of houses, you now see shiny, giant truck cabs and pickup trucks.

But the townspeople are still pretty nice, and pretty much the same.

We'll look forward to seeing you at the next Barry Apple Festival.

And your tattooed daughter will be welcomed there, too.

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