Monday, October 09, 2006

What night is Pagan night?

Yesterday Cowboy, Hello Kitty and I went out to Lake Geneva, one of our favorite towns in Wisconsin. We took the scenic route, and poked around in the antique shops in Richmond, tried some pumpkin fudge that was all raw un-spiced pumpkin and little fudge, then hit the wine and cheese shop for cheese curds. When we finally got to Lake Geneva, we expected to have the glistening water and cute shops all to ourselves. Whoa. Not quite. There was a harvest festival going on, and I've never seen the town so busy. We ate lunch and took a walk along the lake path to let people leave. Unfortunately, this also meant most of the shops were closed although we did manage to get some more fudge to make up for the earlier pumpkin disaster. The walk included a look at some of the mansions built when all the big names in Chicago - Field's and Wrigley to name two - used Lake Geneva as a vacation spot. The houses are amazing - even the ones not owned by a famous family. There's a gorgeous Queen Anne from early 1900's with 20 rooms and 4 stories, and an Italianate palace - as examples.

On our way home, we went passed Fairwyn Farms. It was about 7:30 at night, but the farm was hoppin'. We knew there was a good corn maze there, so I convinced Cowboy to pull in. We parked and got out, and I joked, "watch, it's not open - we're just crashing some kid's 16th birthday party." There were a lot of young people, but I thought maybe the farm was open a little late because of the holiday today. We went to the ticket counter and asked if the corn maze was open. They told us it closed at 5. Huh, I thought - that was a long time to keep other stuff open if the corn maze is closed. Nevertheless, we could hear a "band" off by the corn field so we wandered off in search of other activities. We checked out the corn maze - it looks nice, then watched the "band" for a while. Cowboy noted that he really felt like he was part of a Smallville episode. It was totally true except none of us was wearing flannel. The "band" was really one kid on top of some farm equipment singing. The kid was pretty good, and he kind of sounded like Damien Rice. We listened to him a bit and I watched the kids around him get all excited for each song. I couldn't understand how they knew the songs and I didn't. Then it hit me - he was playing all Christian rock. I said, "Uh...we didn't crash some kid's birthday party, we crashed a church retreat!" Cowboy jokingly took a step back and said, "I wonder if I'm going to burst into flames soon." We couldn't be sure of Cowboy's safety, so when the kid finished singing two songs later, we made our way out to the entrance. Not to be deterred by the fact that clearly this was a group outing, I went up to the ticket counter again. I asked if the tractor rides were still going on. The woman said, "Well, everything is running for THE GROUP." I should've been embarrassed, but really I was thinking of asking, "Uh-huh, I see. And for purposes of the tractor ride, how do I become part of this group?"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Next time I'm crashing a religious outing, I'm going with them!