Where Real is Really Surreal
By Don Adams © Don Adams 2002

Those of us who live here, as well as many who visit, are not the least bit hesitant about labeling some of the things we see or participate in down here in Mexico as “surreal”. A friend recently gave me a book entitled TEXAS Curiosities---Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff.

Don’t worry, this is a Public Service Announcement, not another book review. A PSA for all those dedicated South of the Border publicity seeking fund-raisers who seem to be running out of fresh ideas for their individual projects. Hang on folks; I’ll tell you where “surreal” originated, but just to alleviate some of the suspense I’ll go ahead and tell you that it’s not necessarily Mexico.

First, let me say that I applaud all those who strive mightily to get their names and pictures into the papers and magazines in their local areas. Because of tired old Dog Shows, Chili Cook-offs, Dances, Fashion Shows, Talent Shows, and other well-worn fundraisers which have been covered over and over by tired, disinterested local reporters, they’re falling far short of the massive exposure they could otherwise enjoy. To remedy these shortcomings I humbly offer up a few suggestions gleaned from John Kelso’s superlative study of Lone Star weirdness. Pay attention money-makers, this will be worth a fortune.

I must admit that I have a personal interest in this first proposal since, as all my friends and some of my occasional one-time-only-thank-you-so-much-for-spending-money-on-me dates know, I’m one of the planet’s premier SPAM aficionados. SPAM with brown sugar and milk for breakfast, with mustard or mayo on white bread for midnight snacks, or straight from the can and shared with my domesticated menagerie are all culinary delights to be savored and appreciated. You can imagine my delight in finding that SPAMARAMA is alive and well and keeping to its annual observance in Austin, Texas; although the founder of the event, David Arnsberger moved to Colorado. I never claimed there were no adverse side effects to recreational SPAM use.

Time to get down to business. The idea here is to create an edible SPAM based dish or drink. For the unimaginative among us, here are a few previous entries: SPAMalama Ding Dongs, SPAMachini Alfredo, SPAMbo (SPAM gumbo), Moo Goo Gai SPAM, and even a Tequila SPAMrise. As delicious as this all sounds, it’s not the really fun part. I mean it beats a Chili Cook-off hands down, but the real money shot is the SPAM Olympics. Games and fun for the entire family! Yuks aplenty! Consider the SPAM Cram in which the contestant who devours a twelve-ounce can of congealed pig parts in the shortest time wins. Kelso says the record is sixty-six seconds, in case you want to start training for the title. I’m sure that with all the former All-Stars and All-Americans who have retired down here that coming up with new and exciting sporting uses for the product will be no problem.

And with all the artistic types extant I’m sure that SPAM sculpting, pig parts based paintings, and some sort of SPAM-themed jewelry making competition will be included. The possibilities are endless if you truly want local fame.

Just in case you think Mr. Kelso is joking about this, up to 2002 the event has been observed in Austin for twenty-four consecutive years.

You might think that this would be an un-toppable festival, but you know I won’t leave you hanging with only a single reputation maker.

How about something involving agriculture? There are tons and tons of sandias (watermelons) down here which are, I'm sure, dying to be used in emulation of the participants, both human and fruit (Fruit-Americans in California), of the Luling Watermelon Thump. Their big claim to fame is the really pedestrian event of watermelon seed spitting, but somebody who really wanted to get a big photo in the paper could come up with something like a watermelon rind skating contest, a wet T-shirt contest featuring nubile young contestants smooshing through ripe red (or yellow) slices and letting the juice drip to wherever gravity takes it, or my favorite, watermelon wine making and chug-a-lugging. Get Tom T. Hall (he’s still alive isn’t he?) to entertain the crowds and you might be able to make The Music City News or even Rolling Stone. Or at least Truck Farmer Chin Music Weekly.

If you’re really into produce you might consider following the lead of the folks in Gilmore who organize and successfully foist onto the totally suspecting citizenry, - the East Texas Yamboree. Keep in mind that many Texans merely amusedly tolerate the oddities emanating from that side of the Republic for the purpose of maintaining our status as the second largest state in the union until global warming returns us to our rightful place as number one. Anyway, the gist of this celebration is to encourage malleable children to decorate yams. You know, turn them into airplanes, whales, penguins, or Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton? Yeah, due to shallow East Texas genetic pools some of the “children” might chronologically and hormonally be thirty or forty years old, but developmentally be somewhere in the mid to high single digits.

Okay, that may have sounded cruel, but as proof of my contention please consider that the bicycle race that’s part of the shindig is called …I’m not lying…the “Tour de Yam”. Maybe you should just pass on this one.

Almost as bad is the Tomato Fest over at Jacksonville. Yes, as a matter of fact, we are still in East Texas. The “highlight of the day”, according to a C of C spokesperson is the Battle of San Tomato. Have I previously mentioned East Texas wit?

Anyway, the idea here is to gather up two teams of twenty-five borderline retardees, give each team twenty cases of tomatoes, and let them loose to lob the scarlet orbs at each other for five minutes. The biggest problem the organizers have each year is locating someone who can read a watch well enough to time the event.

Less exciting events are the tomato golf competition played with cherry tomatoes, and bobbing for tomatoes. Much less exciting. Hell, let’s scratch this one too. Wait, I forgot that the mean age of our expat crowd down here is about a hundred and seven point three, and that many believe themselves to be golfers. Leave this one in on the short list. Just arrange for lifeguards to be standing by for the bobbing competition.

I almost hesitate to bring up this next one but it’s just too damn cool to leave off. Over in Marshall (As you’ll soon see, we’re still in East Texas.) they have the Fire Ant Festival, which features the Ugly Face Contest. The big event here is the Fire Ant Calling Contest. Would I lie? There are three separate competitions here. One for calling the little critters to the feed trough; one as a danger alarm; and of course, the mandatory mating squeal. The follow-up event is the Fire Ant Round-up. For this event they give each contestant a one-gallon milk jug and send them out to see who can collect the most fire ants in two hours. Two hours. TWO HOURS!! Talk about too much time on your hands. Also, most of us down here are not going to have real Fire Ants (fahr aints in Texanese) in our backyards, but as far as I’m concerned an ant is an ant.

Fire Ant Festival. Ugly Face Contest. The major drawback I see here is the dearth of Mexican Fire Ants.

Now here’s one that really makes sense. Mas o menos. I mean we are still talking about East Texas. In Palestine they have the Hot Pepper Festival, which is a natural for someone who wants to get some personal publicity tied to a semi-Mexican theme. Jeez, a real thinker, a determined thinker, could conceivably get mentioned in any number of publications. Say, The Sodbuster Journal or Hooters and Peppers Monthly. The possibilities are endless.

The good news is that in the Macho Man Pepper Eating Contest there is an official hierarchy of heat in regard to the pepper consumption; and each year, according to the director of the Palestine Convention and Visitors Bureau the winner’s tiara goes to a new person since, even though we are still in East Texas, the winners are, surprisingly, too bright to show up for the contest more than once. This should not be a problem down here in Retirementville, where gringo Alzheimer’s is almost mandatory.

Oh yeah, the hierarchy. Each contestant eats, or at least tries to eat, nine peppers. Evidently the contest begins with the palatable bell, then the poblana, the always popular jalapeño, and at last the nervous system paralyzing habañero. Again, let’s get serious about possible contestants. Guys, our prostates are shot and we dribble both above and below the belt, our hair is often courtesy of Ron Popeil’s spray can, most of the teeth are porcelain, and if it weren’t for advanced telescope technology adapted to facial prosthetics, we wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the safe women who are shouting NO!, and dangerous ones who are panting YES! After all that dribbling do you think we have an adequate supply of our own natural juices sufficient to digest even one pepper? Scratch this one. Trust me, just scratch it. On second thought, why? When you stop to think about it, it’s not really any worse than what we’ve already done to ourselves.

This little event is entirely too depressing to think about and I believe we just need to leave East Texas. Actually I think everybody needs to leave East Texas, but that’s a subject for a whole other rant.

Up on the High Plains, in Miami, they hold the NATIONAL Cow-Calling Contest. Does this give any of you folks an idea? Does the word INTERNATIONAL sound enticing? International publicity. Worldwide recognition. Fame without borders. Ego massages in an infinite number of languages. Fire Ants? No. Cows? Si. I know for a fact that cows will come when called. Okay, maybe they just smell the feed you’re standing on beside the truck and shaking out onto the ground and come running, but at least they come. Ants just amble mindlessly along until they happen to come to your foot, and then they sting the ever lovin’ snot out of you. Mindless and mean. Add intoxicated and blonde and you’ve described my ideal woman.

But back to the fund-raiser. There are normally four categories- men’s, women’s, grandmothers’, and grandfathers’. Do you see how the South of the Border competition might be completed in half the time as the North of the Border version where they actually have a non-mummified contestant pool? Or maybe you could still have four categories down here; the two grammy groups and then wheezing and non-wheezing competitions. There are tons of possibilities here if you’re truly determined to be mentioned in print.

If you’re one of the dozen or so viewers who watched WKRP in Cincinnati and you saw the episode where as part of a Thanksgiving Day promotion they released live turkeys from a helicopter, or if like me, you just have an unusually strange outlook, you’re bound to appreciate the Quitaque Guinea Drop. In this “it sounded like a good idea at the time” exercise they fly over a pre-designated area at a height of from three hundred to five hundred feet and toss out live guineas to which have been attached coupons which can be redeemed for prizes. They claim that the guineas flap their wings a few times and then gracefully glide to the ground. They claim. Cogitate for awhile and you’ll be able to figure out how to launch fowl to both raise funds and avoid publicity. Did you ever think you’d actually consider that to be a good idea?

In all honesty this is my absolute favorite of all time. I know what you’re thinking, but after years of semi-professional help I’ve come to grips with certain aspects of my various psychological problems and I’m no longer much concerned about what other folks think.

Okay, let’s follow John’s trail on down into South Texas where the strangely cool folks live, and where it naturally follows, the strangely cool fund-raisers take place. Consider the Paseo del Rio Mud Festival in San Antonio. The high point of this hootenanny is the mud fight that takes place as the city lowers the level of the river to clean it. The river is flanked on either side by the River Walk, the most visited tourist attraction in the entire Lone Star State. They clean the river each year, removing kitchen appliances, missing persons, and various other bits of flotsam; and mud.

Yes, I do remember that I denigrated the Jacksonville tomato tossers, but this is different. Somewhat. The saving grace here is that even though the mud commandos are obviously at least a pop top short of a six-pack, they do rise above common idiocy by staging an event in which they throw mudballs at pictures of politicians. I know, I know, but they can’t get the real pols within a thousand miles of the place for a week on either side of the festival date.

And over at Clute, a place it’s no longer safe for me to visit because one of my exes probably still has a contract out on me in the Brazosport area, they hold the Great Texas Mosquito Festival. We have a lot of mosquitoes in Mexico. Highlights of this celebration of beauty, skill, and handicrafts are a mosquito calling contest (sad, but true), a mosquito swatter decorating contest, and a mosquito leg look alike contest. As in the person who’s legs look most like a mosquito’s wins. This is not a contest most people should brag about winning. I know you’re waiting for an ex-wife remark, but I’m moving on to the last entry you need to know about. John Kelso really outdid himself by finding this next gem.

Think about this one before you reject it. The World Championship Rattlesnake Races in San Patricio. Rattlesnake Races. Granted, it does sound strange at first, and sure, I know you have concerns about locating jockeys, but it’s definitely a low-rent doable deal. First, you don’t need jockeys. Next, you can get the snakes for free. Just go out and stick your arm in holes until you’ve gathered up enough. Sure, you may get bit; but what the hell. As a matter of fact, you’ll probably get more press by getting fanged than by actually staging a successful fund-raiser. Couldn’t hurt to try. Well, actually…

But back to the races. What you do is set up a course constructed of a series of long troughs. I suggest that you use blue plastic tarps; the ubiquitous tarpo de plastico azul. If you have difficulty locating enough blue plastic tarps, you’re obviously not in Mexico. This is an event that is best staged after you and the rest of the board of directors get stinking drunk and are fully prepared, nay anxious, to throw caution to the winds. It’s much more entertaining for the paying customers. Much more.

Of course some of the snakes are going to try to avoid cooperating in this sport by refusing to undulate down the racetrack. This should not be a problem. What the folks in San Patricio do is whack the ground close to the snaketrack with five-foot long plastic poles (PVC ought to do the job) to cause the earth to vibrate and therefore stimulate the snakes into a slithering frenzy. If this is not enough to induce the participants to actually make it to the finish line then whichever serpent is farthest along at the end of fifteen minutes is declared the winner. Remember, we’re not in East Texas anymore, so chances are excellent that someone will own a watch and actually understand how to use it.

You can’t begin to imagine the publicity you’ll get on this one.

That’s part of the Texas Tour of Surreality, but there’s much more. Here’s what I’d do if I were you, assuming you don’t already own a copy of this book. I’d get on Amazon.com and order it. In 1980 John Kelso ran for president. Of the United States. In case you didn’t get the paper that day he didn’t win, but I’d bet he still has campaign bills to pay, so I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sale. Or, just send me your home phone number and US $162.49 and I’ll call you collect and read the whole cotton-pickin’ book to you. Or call (800) 962-0973 to see if anybody has anything interesting to say.