Better Cantina

            Somewhere around the time we threw Cheeseman’s leg at the judging table, only to have it promptly jettisoned back at us, I knew we were going to win.

            Not that there wasn’t competition.  A Noah’s Ark nursery school had a slew of adorable children on their float.  There was another group of kids dressed as various candies (including a precious little yellow M&M), and the Jefferson Teen Queens (I think of Dairy, but I’m not 100% sure) rode with their sashes and dresses atop a pick up truck, waving to their adoring crowd. 

            The biggest competition, though, came from our buddy Scott, who had decided to put a half a house on a float to promote his construction company (it was LITERALLY the front of a house- and Doc, the Farm’s white haired neighbor, was pounding nails into the roof, while the rest of the crew “worked” the front lawn and edges).  But with two years of winning “Best Float” in the annual Redwood Field Days Parade under their belt, the folks at Better Farm were not quite ready to give up their hold on the top prize (a check for $100- and a whole lot of street cred in Redwood).

            It’s not every day you find yourself standing atop a flatbed in the middle of downtown Redwood, population 567 (580-something with our outsourced Better Farm crew).  Redwood is a small patch of rural America, the kind that, if you drive down the main drag, consists of a post office, two taverns, a couple of churches, and a general store attached to a gas station.  There are also acres of farmland, some of it beautiful, some of it dilapidated.  It is faster to drive from Redwood to a drive-in movie theatre and taxidermist (these are separate businesses) than it is to a supermarket.

            In its heyday, back in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, the train to the riverside town of Alexandria Bay stopped here from distant places like New York City and Syracuse.  Ladies would gently climb down, parasols in hand, skirts brushing the tops of their shined shoes, and explore a bit with their top hat wearing counterparts, before climbing into horse drawn carriages, and heading to their private islands, St. Lawrence River-side homes, and the array of resorts.  When the train stopped coming, much of the town dried up, hence the multitude of abandoned Victorian-era homes and collapsing barns.  But there were hardy folk who dug in their heels, and in 2016, their descendants line the streets in front of the ice cream shop and bars.  Small children stand with bags, ready to sweep up candy thrown from the obliging parade participants.

            And that’s what we are.  Our theme for the year is the Cantina scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.  Though, after some discussion, all of the Star Wars movies were deemed fair game, and an X-Wing Fighter was built, along with costumes ranging from Luke to Vader to Kylo Ren to R2 D2 to Oola to Leia. 

            My husband Jeff and I had left the kids with our parents for the weekend, and made the five-hour drive north as an escape from the day-to-day monotony of North Jersey suburbia.  Spending a few days on my sister’s Better Farm, herding rogue farm animals, lake hopping, plus participating in the classic American past time of town-wide Field Days, was just what we needed.

            The day before, the X-Wing Fighter was a shell, pieces of wood drilled together hastily by Better Farm interns, and covered with large sheets of white plastic. In the morning, when we decided it was “time to get serious,” stock of the situation was taken, amidst the consumption of copious amounts of Pabst Blue Ribbon (when in the country…), and tasks were assigned.  The red details were pieced together using red duct tape.   Kip then hit the wings with black spray paint to create “space dust.”  Aethena and I dragged a U-shaped box made out of wood panels to the float, and proceeded to hoist it onto the structure, declaring (with much delight) that it made a perfect bar, and thus saved us about an hour of work.  When it was covered with a white sheet, and the “Better Cantina” sign hung behind it, it certainly sufficed. 

            The costumes range from thrown together to genius.  Aethena went all in, with a C-3PO polyester gold number that looks like it was painted on.  Nicole followed suit with Oola’s her headdress of thick green tentacles, a fabulously crafted combinations of green pantyhose and pillow stuffing.  One of the interns had crafted an R2-D2 cap out of paper mache, and a full body suit of cardboard.  I had channeled Leia’s Jabba the Hut scene, with gold bikini and long hair.  Unfortunately, the bikini didn’t arrive in time, so I’d spent much of the day before searching K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and Party City in the nearest town for something that would be a proper substitute.  I settled on gold foil wrapping paper that I attached with duct tape to a bikini top.  With the long skirt, and some well-placed hair extensions, it was close enough.

            We hooted and hollered as the pickup truck that towed us turned precariously out of the gas-station-ice-cream-shop and onto Rt. 37.  Darth Vader (a shirtless intern) battled with Luke (my husband commanding a rocking 80’s wig and white nurse’s garb that looked remarkably accurate). as $6 light sabers from K-Mart slashed the air. Dancing to the Cantina theme, we ducked and dodged the X-Wing as we moved around the float.  Candy was thrown, lightsabers were broken, and as we slowed to a halt in front of the judges, there was a brief tussle, and a light saber slammed down between Cheeseman’s hip and the fake leg we’d dressed to match his real one, effectively dismembering him.  With a scream, he picked up the imposter and thrust it at the judges.  One jumped back, and the others, with shrieks of delight, picked it up, and hurled it back over the surprised audience onto the float.  We cheered, and continued on our route, waving the leg high above our heads like a victory flag.

            Hours later, the adrenaline worn off and our make up streaked, we busied ourselves in front of The Bad Husbands Club, a band playing the post-parade Redwood Field Days Carnival. Athena and Nicole were still in their Star Wars garb, not wanting to let go of the winner’s high they’d been experiencing since the Better Farm Three-Peat had been confirmed.  The rest of us had changed back into more appropriate, mosquito-resistant clothes, and danced on the blacktop next to the firehouse, strains of “Touch of Grey” by the Grateful Dead emanating from the band’s speakers.

            I closed my eyes, bouncing to the music, holding hands with my sister while her stuffed green stockings bounced up and down on her head.  The Paratrooper ride’s colors swirled in the background, and as I looked a Nicole and the alien appendages bouncing on her head, it reminded me briefly of when our mother dressed us up as Cabbage Patch Dolls one Halloween, and stuffed normal pantyhose with batting to make our skinny little girl legs seem more doll-like.  Acting like kids once again, we giggled and swayed, while the smells of the carnival- fried dough, bug spray, and a cheap beer- wafted around us, mingling with the cigarette smoke that made me cough.  We belted out the lyrics, “Light a candle, curse the glare/Draw the curtains, I don't care 'cause… It's all right/I will get by.”  I watched Aethena make her way towards the stage, a streak of gold reflecting the stage lights. 
The band seamlessly transitioned into “Not Fade Away” and she shuffled up the steps and grabbed a rogue cowbell, banging away in time, and dancing with the lead singer. 

        
The cool night air was a welcome respite after the 90+ degree temperatures, and the grass next to the stage felt slick when I stepped onto it.  Collapsing onto a wooden bench, I took in the scene around me.  Fluorescent lights blurred as a variety of rides whirled and whizzed around, throwing their occupants this way and that with all the centrifugal force they could muster.  Giddy children and teens ran around, while their parents pontificated and gestured, spewing ash from their cigarettes and beer from their plastic cups. It was loud, rowdy, a far cry from the suburban scenes I’m used to, where if you wander around the downtown on a Saturday, you see hushed conversations at sidewalk tables and couples closing themselves off from the world.  Here, there was a welcome inclusion, with bear hugs and jostling, a way of life that only can exist in the rural outskirts of upstate New York, in a little town that continues to get by on its own terms, in its own way.  It’s a pretty good way to spend a Saturday.