I had the opportunity last night to volunteer at the beer tent at the International Festival, to raise money for Lorain Youth Baseball. When I first got there, I walked around a bit, to see what was going on.

The Chair was wise to get in line as early as he did for the Hungarian booth. This is the only booth I’ve ever seen that had to use theater ropes to cordone off an area to keep an organized line due to the amount of people waiting. That must be some AWESOME chicken paprikash.

There was a good crowd, but nothing near what is normal for the Friday night of the International. Storms earlier in the afternoon kept a considerable amount of folks away. When there’s only 4-5 folks in line for Gyros at the Greek booth, you know things are slow. But as I said, there was a good crowd.

So, back to the mud. Despite the tent part of the beer tent, there was a LOT of mud. Did I say a LOT? I meant a LOT.

Some folks were serving beers in bare feet, because feet are easier to clean than shoes. As far as the folks buying the beers, let’s just say they looked like they were tip-toeing through a mine field. I offered to sell one guy a raft for $10, it was THAT wet.

Lotsa folks buying beer. Now, I’ve bartended in my younger days, and I enjoyed it. But the thing that I was never able to understand was someone ordering a beer, and, when given the choice of regular or light beer (aka leaded or unleaded), telling me it doesn’t matter. Amigo, you’re the one drinking it. I want you to enjoy it since it’s your money. So, I don’t want to make the choice for you. But I was given that opportunity too many times.

I had fun. I really did. I was there ’til 10:30, and then I walked through BRL again, and the amount of folks had really dropped off. I bought 2 snoogles (did I really call those snickerdoodles??!) for my wife and kids, a large bag of Kettle Corn (is that stuff GOOD or what?!) and watched everyone enjoying themselves.

On my way out, I stopped by the stage. Chuck (Camera) and I had talked about the band that was playing last night. We only really noticed it when it was slow, but the band sounded fantastic! Click here for a snippet of their performance.

According to the forecast, the rest of the weekend does not look good. There seems to be one huge storm on its way in from Indiana as of right now (2:20am). I hope things have cleared up enough by the time the Festival opens at 12pm for everyone to get down there for some of that great food.

As for me, I’ll probably put more time in at the beer tent.

In my old shoes.

As a side note: I was just sent this scan by Dennis Lamont. With all the stormy weather we’ve been having, thought it might be important to pass this along: