I couldn't sleep, so I was up at 3 A.M., watching TV and writing in my journal.
Ate a banana and two pieces of sausage for breakfast.
We were on the road by 7:30 A.M., taking our time as we rode to
Centerville.
The sun was just rising, and a cloud of mist hung over the ground.
We travel north on hwy 43 turning left on hwy 50 near
Columbia.
Vendors were still sitting up at their booths when we arrived.
We walked around downtown, stopping to look inside the old courthouse, which housed several vendors.
Outside, we stopped in front of the
chicken wire MINI Pearl to take a couple of pictures.
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| Minnie Pearl |
We followed the signs to the open field where the Banana Pudding Festival was being held.
Inside the gate, we were asked if we were first-timers and given a banana sticker with 'first-timers' written across it. Several people were placing pins on a large map to show where they were from.
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| Monkey Head |
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| Smokey the Bear |
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| Entering the Pudding Festival |
The woman said we have thousands of people from all over the world who come to our festival. We have a couple who come from Australia every year.
The Cook-off
The cook-off consisted of ten contests, and we watched the first five.
Each contest made two of the same puddings: one for the judges to sample, and one for the audience to judge.
The first pudding was to be auctioned off.
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| The first 5 contestants in the Cook-off |
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| One of the contestant's Banana Puddin dishes |
At 10 A.M., we were at the
Puddin' Path for 10 samples of different banana puddings.
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The Puddin' Path Samples
Baked by the Puddin'
#2 The Chisel (Chocolate)
#3 White Chocolate & Caramel Banana Pudding
#4Bell's Best Banana Pudding
#5Pickadeli at the Hicadeli
#6 Pudding & Pearls Banana Pudding
#10Cinnamon Roll Banana Pudding
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The puddings consist of bananas inside a variety of puddings from various organizations.
Each organization had baked the pudding to raise money for its cause.
The Pudding path cost was $5 per person.
Once you tasted each pudding, you could vote for your favorite with a donation.
We could not eat all the samples; some were very good, while others were not so good.
My favorite was the cheesecake banana pudding.
We stayed to listen to a couple of songs performed by a trio of young people from the same family.
We strolled through the park, stopping to examine what each vendor had to offer.
We stopped at the
car show and took several pictures.
We saw a replica of
Mini Peal riding in a jeep.
From the car show, we walked a few blocks to
The First Baptist Church on
123 Church Street to look at the
Hickman County Quilt Guild.
The show featured "
Something old, Something new"!
Their mission is to promote an interest in the art of quilting.
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| Something Old, something new |
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| Two of the sweet ladies that we met at the Quilt show |
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| My quilt pick! |
We rode to
Grinder's Switch.
Grinders Switch was the fictional hometown of the comic character Minnie Pearl, created and portrayed at the Grand Ole Opry by comedian Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, who grew up in the nearby Colleyville neighborhood of Centerville.
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| Watertower at Grinders Switch |
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Grinders Switch 1940
Minnie Pearl said, People always ask me, 'Where is Grinder's Switch?"
As I grow older, the place is no longer a little, abandoned landing switch on a railroad in Hickman County. Grinder's Switch is a state of mind -- a place where there is no illness, no war, no unhappiness, no political unrest, and no tears. It's a place where there's only happiness, where all you worry about is what you are going to wear to the church social, and if your feller is going to kiss you in the moonlight on the way home.
I wish all of you a Grinder's Switch.
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On our way home, we stopped at
Ponderosa in Lawrence to eat an early dinner and a late lunch.
We both ordered a steak and salad.
We still had a couple of hours to visit the
Oktoberfest in St Florine.
The tractor was loaded with passengers as we approached.
We loaded into the wagon and rode around the festival.
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| Riding in the Wagon |
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| Oktoberfest |
The
Senior Center building was full of history about the German families that had settled in St Florine.
We walked inside, but I stopped at the first display and began talking to one of the family members who lived in the area.
By the time I stopped talkin, the festival was about over.
M can return tomorrow.
