August, Queens, and other Stuff

  

August . . .  August is here.  Ugh.  That means it is very, very, very, very, hot.  And humid.  

I spoke with a woman today who said she could hardly wait until September for things to cool off.     hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Yeah – no – maybe by October – maybe.

So much for the weather.

What else?

Well, I was told today (by my dentists office) I am Queen for a Day!  And doesn’t that sound cool? 

Unfortunately the new crown I got, didn’t come with gold and jewels.

Though for the cost, it should have!

Still, it got done with no discomfort and I don’t have to worry about breaking that particular tooth.

What else again?

It’s been very quiet around big W lately.  So, I got online to see What Else – and this week is:

Weird Contest Week
(I had way too much fun with this)

North American Wife Carrying Championship

Wife-carrying contests can be found all over the world, from Kazakhstan to Finland. Stateside contests largely follow Finland’s official rules for the competition, from the length of the track (278 yards) to the number of obstacles (two dry obstacles, one wet).

Nailympia

The premier Nailympia competition was derived from the Nail Olympics, a contest started in 2001 in Las Vegas. The event is famous for being 100% non-product-run. Judges—all industry experts from around the world—don’t know anything about the nails they’re looking at.  (I couldn’t tell what I was looking at either – that person is standing with hands at waist height, splayed open fingers, palm down.)

Great Knaresborough Bed Race

If you’ve ever dreamt of running through a 2.4-mile course with 629 other people broken into teams pushing intricately decorated beds toward a finish line, England’s Great Knaresborough Bed Race is for you. The contest sees 90 teams of six runners (and one passenger, naturally) pushing homemade beds of their own creation through an obstacle course flanked by fellow paraders, marching bands, and cheering squads.

Jalapeño Eating Contest

Some like it hot. The 4th of July celebrations in Round Rock, Texas allow you to take part in a jalapeño eating contest. The current record for jalapeno eating is 247 peppers in 8 minutes set in 2006.  (And, that has to be just bad for you!)

World Cow Chip Throwing Contest

The small town of Beaver in Oklahoma is often called The Cow Chip Tossing Capital of the world. The residents are so proud of their agricultural heritage that every spring, they indulge in this unusual sport of throwing a dried cow turd as far as an eye can see. (Well, ooookay)

World Championship Rotary Tiller Race

In Emerson, Arkansas, contestants run behind their tiller (they don’t ride it) to see who can till 200 feet of plowed ground the fastest. The tiller must have tines or blades, and an engine no bigger than 100 hp. Contestants must wear shoes, yes, that really is a rule. 

Finally, today is

 

Paul Bunyan Day

Paul Bunyan is a mythological lumberjack who, according to legends, created the lakes and rivers, the Grand Canyon, and even the Back Hills. The United States, according to the tales about Paul, looks the way it does, with mountains, craters, and winding rivers, because of Paul’s adventures.  There has been speculation that Paul Bunyan’s stories come from the antics of Fabian Fournier, also known as Saginaw Joe, a French-Canadian lumberjack.  Saginaw Joe’s life was sensationalized, even without the guise of Paul Bunyan. Stories say that he was taller than the average man at the time and that he had two complete sets of teeth, which allowed him to bite through wooden rails.

So, here’s a story for you -

Paul Bunyan’s Kitchen

One winter, Paul Bunyan came to log along the Little Gimlet in Oregon. Ask any old timer who was logging that winter, and they’ll tell you I ain’t lying when I say his kitchen covered about ten miles of territory.

That stove, now, she were a grand one. An acre long, taller than a scrub pine, and when she was warm, she melted the snow for about twenty miles around. The men logging in the vicinity never had to put on their jackets ’til about noon on a day when Paul Bunyan wanted flapjacks.

It was quite a site to see, that cook of Paul Bunyan’s making flapjacks. Cookie would send four of the boys up with a side of hog tied to each of their snowshoes, and they’d skate around up there keeping the griddle greased while Cookie and seven other men flipped flapjacks for Paul Bunyan. Took them about an hour to make enough flapjacks to fill him up. The rest of us had to wait our turn.

The table we had set up for the camp was about ten miles long. We rigged elevators to the table to bring the vittles to each end, and some of the younger lads in the camp rode bicycles down the path at the center, carrying cakes and such wherever they were called for.

We had one mishap that winter. Babe the Blue Ox accidentally knocked a bag of dried peas off the countertop when he swished his tail. Well, them peas flew so far and so fast out of the kitchen that they knocked over a dozen loggers coming home for lunch, clipped the tops off of several pine trees, and landed in the hot spring. We had pea soup to eat for the rest of the season, which was okay by me, but them boys whose Mama’s insisted they bath more than once a year were pretty sore at losing their swimming hole.

 10 Aug 2021