A Time and a Place is a short story written by Tim Clark, and shared with The Ugly Writers under the theme Begin Again.
Since we retired three-day weekends have lost some of their luster. Every day is a Saturday. When we were working a paid Monday off was like a little gift from the gods of toil and sweat. Sure, Tuesday was awful, all that work piled up for three days waiting in ambush. Looking back, I’m sure it was worth it, but sometimes, in the fleeting moments of reality, I wasn’t always so sure.
When we were working, we always tried to celebrate the end of summer by doing something fun for Labor Day. For several years we went to Swappers Day in Johnstown Ohio. Johnstown is a sleepy little town tucked neatly between the obvious wealth of New Albany and the simple, salt-of-the-earth Amish farmland of northeast Ohio.
Swappers Day is a crush of humanity fenced in on 5 acres of rolling, broken pastureland, a wild romp through a dream of a forgotten era, a picturesque rural reality, and an outsized display of masculine, 2nd Amendment exhibitionism. But it has a small-town appeal to a person who grew up in rural Nebraska. Growing up around friends and family who owned guns, guns for hunting, and target shooting, and sometimes just shooting for the hell of it. Guns didn’t bother me. In the environment of Swappers firearms are a fashion accessory or a status symbol. The more the better.
It was the parking lot that finally soured me on Swappers. It was always difficult and time-consuming to park, and even worse to leave. Over the years it got worse. On our last visit we waited in a line of automobiles. Statues, setting stationary on the flattened grass of the parking lot/pasture. Tempers began to flare, and several people abandoned their cars, and wandered up and down the aisle, bitching and carping. I began to worry about a riot. For the first time I noticed how many guns there were. It seemed like everybody had one, some people had several, strapped on their belts, slung over their shoulders, a bellicose display of power. We were too old for that.
We decided to find something else.
In the fashionable short north strip of High Street, adjacent to the Convention Center and just a short walk from North Market, sets the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church. A beautiful building, constructed with elaborate brickwork, stained glass windows, towering, ornate domed roofs, overlooking a walled-in courtyard and parking lot. A commanding presence in an area that sells itself.
Every year, on Labor Day weekend, the church hosts the Greek Festival. A celebration of Greek culture, spirituality and food. Having become a novice, or sub-novice history buff, Greece is everything. The entire history of the world played out on the mountainous peninsula. Before the rest of the world even realized they were the rest of the world, Greece was inventing democracy, philosophy, modern mathematics, even modern medicine (sort of), and the infantry phalanx, not everything was so benign.
It seemed like a great place to wander, look at life through the lens of a different, older culture. We went for a couple of years and had a really good time. It was fun, and we enjoyed the opulence of the church, the lively music and dancing and the food, oh the food was amazing. Not being Greek, or particularly religious, I felt out of place, almost like a voyeur, and we decided to find something else.
Enter the Zucchini.
We had heard of the Obetz Zucchinifest before, but never really knew anything about it. We never really knew anything about Obetz. I had always assumed Obetz was one of those “hard places.” Streets filled with tattoo parlors and rundown bars, a place best driven past on the outer belt. From what little I saw, it seems my assumption was dead wrong.
Originally founded as Obetz Junction in 1838 as a stagecoach junction. It proudly bears the name of the founder, Charles Obetz. As of the 2020 census there 5,489 residents. Our drive, which was only a short trip through the small town, left an impression of clean, tree lined streets, orderly residential areas, the aura was more Rockwell than Roadhouse. It even smelled wholesome.
There was as a confluence of favorable events on Saturday, August 30. The University of Texas football team was playing Ohio State university at Ohio Stadium. It was a matchup of top ranked teams. A widely anticipated showdown and endlessly discussed game that had fans and members of the press whipped into a rabid frenzy. People all over town sat, rapt in front of a screen.
It left the walkways between booths, and around attractions open and accessible. Along with the reduced attendance provided by the big game the weather was wonderful, it was a perfect day, or at least a perfect four or five hours, to attend a festival.
Across an endless blue sky, a few scattered cottony clouds floated serenely. The blue stretched as far as a person could see. It was easy to imagine that sky reaching from one side of the globe to the other. It was a nice thought, sharing a sky with my brothers all over the world. When you stand under that sky, and the temperature is in the mid-seventies, with a slight breeze; it’s hard to understand all the fighting and hate, bigotry, wars, violence, that sky is an altar, a manifestation of the divine.
Zucchinifest was fun. It was a typical fair, filled with the same food vendors you can find in so many places, bourbon chicken, buckets of French fries, fried mini donuts, elephant ears, sausages with fried peppers and onions. Nothing unusual, nothing local, nothing sponsored by youth fund raising groups. One time, at Street Fair in Yellow Springs we bought some sopapillas from an organization trying to help a local elementary school. Manning the small booth were three women with heavy accents, it could have been a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter. It was some of the best festival food we ever had. Those are the places we look for. Something different, something for a good cause.
But we had a good time, wandering between the tents, talking to the vendors, listening to the parents trying to reason with their children on soft drinks and the wristbands that provided access to the midway rides.
Zucchinifest was held at a place called Fortress Obetz. An amazing facility, almost too big to understand in one visit. It was a sprawling, beautiful space, complete with a football stadium, baseball diamonds, an athletic club, winding roads, and elaborate, manicured greeneries. Our future is fuzzy and indistinct; we run on random impulses. We are attending some future event, a car show, maybe a concert, or something, at Fortress Obetz, just to check the place out.
Being retired doesn’t mean you have to stop enjoying three-day weekends or trying new things. Indeed, it means you should embrace life as quickly and as often as you can. You’ve spent your time worrying about Tuesdays, and deadlines, the world is in younger hands. Find your own sopapillas, look up in awe at the same sky as everybody else in the world, and live in the moment.
Read more from Tim Clark by visiting his website at Life, Explained or by checking out his previous write-ups here at The Ugly Writers.
