Bubonic Days

It is festival time in Michigan!

It is the height of summer and it is time to pay homage as we do in our great state each year to a variety of fruit, vegetables, meat, herbs, and cheese.  We gather by the thousands in almost every major city in the land to parade around town with our particular vegetable on our heads, contribute to the athletic association’s beer tent (best invention by the Catholics ever!) and eat fried food carried around on a stick.

Not to be excluded from the festiveness are an assortment of animals and fish.  We celebrate the brown trout, (not the rainbow….just the brown trout. To me, it seems like the rainbow people need to form a coalition around the discrimination and exclusion of the rainbow trout, maybe I should contact the current administration), salmon, moose etc… all are distinguished by the gathering of humans to make complete fools of themselves in the name of a good party. I maintain these activities are vital to basic happiness.

Some of the merriment is centered on celebrating a particular town’s ethnic heritage. Honoring the original settlers (other than of course the real original settlers, the tribes of many nations), I find myself at the mid-summer becoming Polish for a night in Boyne City, German for a night in Frankenmuth, and Greek in Detroit, denying my Scotch-Irish ancestry in a heartbeat for the sake of a good brat and some flaming saganaki.

So what of my home-town, Gaylord, Michigan? Well we all gather together once a year to pretend we are Swiss.  Every July, girls costume as Swiss Miss and the boys look like they hopped off a Hummel figurine in authentic lederhosen. No, we are not actually Swiss. I discovered this fun fact as I was curious as to why we have chosen to be Swiss each summer for over forty-five years. I discovered we were not settled buy a large population of chocolate and clock manufacturing pioneers.

Our county was first laid out in 1840 and given the name Okkudo; a Native American word for "sickly" or "stomach pain" by Henry Schoolcraft. I can envision the Okkudo chamber of commerce gathering together to discuss their first festival around this theme.

Zeke (Because most folks pre-1900 were named Zeke): “Well, I think our county is ready for a festival, we could use the tourism here in Okkudo”

Henry: “Yes, there are seven of us here now.”

Zeke: “This will be tough for marketing Henry. Come to Okkudo! The place to feel under par and vomit! Our celebration could be called Bubonic Days or Summer Small Pox Festival.

Henry: “That may have been a bad choice for a county name…”

Zeke: “No sh** Sherlock!”

Luckily, someone at a later date changed our name and found a sister city in Switzerland so that now we can be Swiss.

I have to go now…off to the Yale, MI Bologna festival to see who will be crowned the king and queen of Bologna. I hope they have Bologna on a stick!

….of course they do!