Octoberfest

Today was Octoberfest, the very biggest deal in Appleton of the whole year. Here are some things I saw there.

• Down at the Laurence U. end of things, in the miles of white booths selling crafty things, there was one booth with Christmas decorations. Most of them were fabric snowmen wall hangings and Christmas tree ornaments, with lovingly embroidered faces, but they also had, at this same booth, strings of Christmas tree lights that were made out of spent shotgun shell casings.
• When I was watching Greg Waters & The Broad Street Boogie in Houdini Plaza, in the park next to the Art Center there, a little breeze blew through the trees and little yellow leaves started falling down around us. A young man in front of me looked up and beamed with smiles, and turned in a circle to watch them fall all around him. E'd out of his mind, probably, but still, it was lovely to see him enjoying the sight to much.
• When I was watching the 80's nostalgia band Johnny Wad, a line of geese flew overhead. Some other people in the crowd looked up at them and one guy pointed. Nothing fixes a time and place like a row of Canada geese flying south. This wasn't just any old rock concert, this was a rock concert in Wisconsin, in the fall.
• There's a spot just before the Performing Arts Center where you're on a little rise. The road dips down and then rises back up again, toward Badger Ave. and the final stage where Vic Ferrari was playing. From that rise, College Ave was just a mass of people, as far as they eye could see. My main experience of College Ave is walking up it on Sunday afternoon, with a bitter, howling wind, no people, the parking meters are free all day, and nothing is open. This was so the opposite of that that it hardly makes sense. There are only 72,000 people in the whole town. Where did all these folks come from?
• I did meet up with my friend (it took about 8 texts to finally get him on the right corner of the right street), and to celebrate the experience of being at Octoberfest we got a Tiger Paw at a booth that was selling them half-price. A Tiger Paw is a fried pastry that's seriously the size of a dinner plate, and about twice as thick, covered with sugar and cinnamon. I had about half of it, and it was actually amazing. Not too sweet, not too greasy. I'm glad we stopped and had the local experience - I think this is the ultimate thing to get at an Octoberfest food stand (besides a brat with sauerkraut of course, but I'd already had one of those).
• The guitarist and lead singer of the 80's nostalgia band, when they were playing "Another Brick in the Wall" (disturbing to hear a crowd of people shouting proudly along with him "We don't need no education"), he was using precisely my exact guitar - a Fender Standard Stratocaster with tobacco sunburst finish. It's like seeing your Mom suddenly be on the stage, such a familiar thing that I don't yet associate with stages and rock performances. I was having fun watching everyone play and picking out chord patters. It's time for me to be on stage and not in the audience. Soon, soon.
• And I definitely have to learn how to play "Pour Some Sugar On Me". I wonder if, when a woman's singing it instead of Joe Elliot from Def Leppard, if it would sound even dirtier?