On Sunday afternoon, after The Moxie Car Show, I went to a party.  In our little town, class and family reunions often take place during The Moxie Festival.  It’s a good weekend for a homecoming, a pig roast, or even an afternoon tea.

(OK, I’ve never heard of anyone in town having an afternoon tea, but Faye the Barber did once have a “Moxie Afterglow Garden Tour…”)

This particular party was “out in the country” a bit and several of my high school friends were there, including Rick, who owns our town’s internet radio station, and his wife Gwen.  We were sitting in lawn chairs under a canopy with a larger group of friends.  Little children were running around in their bathing suits, screaming and laughing, jumping in and out of a hay bale swimming pool.

Rick and Gwen and the whole radio team put in a lot of time at the festival.  They do two live broadcasts; all day downtown on Saturday and during The Moxie Car Show on Sunday morning.  WQRY-106 spins great car culture music and us ladies working in the snack shack are tapping our toes and doing a little twist while making French fries, hamburgers, and hot dogs for the hungry car show crowds.

This year, we lost our parade announcer three days before the parade and Rick came through with a replacement for us.  I’m wiping a little tear from the corner of my eye right now just thinking about what a big help that was.  Friends help friends, but I still owe Rick big time.

Sitting in the Moxie afterglow, I looked over at Rick and Gwen and said “can you believe Moxie is over for another year?”

No one really wanted to fill that vacuum of silence for a few minutes, but then we started talking about next year’s festival; what worked and what needed improvement.

So it goes and so it begins.

Someone shouted that the burgers and hot dogs were ready and we all lazily rose from our chairs and ambled over to an outstanding summer barbecue, complete with five different church supper-style salads.  There was watermelon for dessert.

It doesn’t get much better.

On my way home around 6:00 p.m., as the day’s heat subsided, I passed Charlie Smith inspecting his newly mowed and raked hay.  From the big grin and the slow country wave he gave me, I guessed it had been a good day for hay.

I stopped at Uncle Bob’s to pick a few peas.  He was out in the garden watering and he predicted the summer heat would get things in the garden growing “a foot a day.”  Then my parents ambled over on a late afternoon walk and spent a few minutes looking at the tomatoes and the corn, both poised for some Herculean growing.  My father looked closely at the corn, which had indeed begun to increase in earnest, and he said in weather like this “you can hear the corn growing at night.”

That sounds like a wonderful sleeping potion.

When I got home, I took a slow walk around my yard and watered my own parched gardens.  My first morning glory is getting ready to unwind and the tiger lilies were blazing in the shade.

Today, we’ll start working on the 2016 Moxie Festival.

So it goes and so it begins.