Harvest Homecoming

This weekend is Harvest Homecoming.\nI'm saying this because you probably don't know what the cuss Harvest Homecoming is and because you probably should.\nAs all my fellow Sunny-Side-of-Louisvillers know, Harvest Homecoming is an annual nine-day festival. It may sound like a celebration of the harvest, but all the crops grown in New Albany have already been confiscated by the police. \n"Harvest" is really a week-long party that drowns downtown New Albany in curbside tent shanties (known as "booths"), a slew of 40-year-old rusted-metal child-kidnapping contraptions (known as "rides") and, most encumbering of all, about three billion filthy, smelly, space-taking beasts (known as "people"). In fact, there are so many of these "people" that it takes a solid three hours to get from the Sweet Tooth Booth to the Gravitron, which is only 50 feet away. I'm not kidding. It takes a long time to wade through three billion people.\nThe only thing worse than squeezing sideways through all those creatures is their smell. It must be a genetically engineered stench that permeates through the dregs on Main and Pearl streets because it's bad enough to disgust a gangrenous foot fungus.\nBut I suppose that sort of detail isn't going to bring anyone down to the river. It's not all bad. It happens to be the second-largest draw in Indiana, next to the Indy 500, and three billion people in one place can't be wrong.\nFor the kids, there are pumpkin patch-loads of things to do. When I was a kid (last fall), I would spend hundreds of my parents' dollars trying fruitlessly to toss a two-inch green plastic ring onto the mouth of a two-liter bottle of Sprite. Good stuff. Or I would ride the Tilt-a-Hurl. Good stuff. Or I would throw a dart at a balloon so I could take home an 8" X 11" poster of Jenny McCarthy wearing nothing but cut-off jean shorts and a pair of socks. Good, wholesome stuff.\nOther than the raunchy carnival prizes, Harvest Homecoming is famous for its food. I have never in my life seen so much food that is so unnecessary. Don't miss the funnel cake, but don't have more than one. Have a taco tub, followed by a taco tumbler, and finish that off with a taco in a bag. For dessert, you can partake in caramel apples, roasted almonds, pumpkin ice cream or fried elephant ears. Several other dishes are in the works, including chicken and dumpling salad, roasted vegetable soup and milk popsicles. Mmmm!\nFor the college set, Harvest is plush with all things liquid and inebriating. Well, not all things, but loads of beer. Hit up the beer tent, which is filled with "people" as disgusting as you, but you'll be so swimmy, you'll never notice. Another trend popular with local alcoholics is the beer walk, where patrons round the downtown bar loop in search of the perfect draught beer. (The beer walk moves along more slowly as the night goes on). \nSpeaking of local alcoholics, Harvest is also a gathering place for all the people Southern Indianans went to high school with. As they're mostly college dropouts, I love to see the people who used to be above me in the past. \n"Oh, you still live in New Albany? Well I live in B-Town and pull down triple figures at the Indiana Daily Student. Sucks to be you." Harvest reminds me of how far I've come in life.\nSo, with all its faults, why am I urging you to go to my humble hometown and attend the largest white-trash-bash east of West Virginia? I don't know, and I can't explain it. But there's something about that smelly, crowded, drunken display of hedonism that tells me I'm home. \nSo come on down and see me at Harvest Homecoming. It's the most fun you never thought you could have.