The Harvest Dance was a great success. Blogs, Twitter and Facebook are all alight with buzz about Megan and Bibi, Jock and his girlfriend, and other noteworthy events.
Yesterday's Grand Apple Parade was great fun, too. As they do every year, the children of Beauneville led the way in their little apple costumes (representing all of the many lovely apple varieties grown in Washington County). The highlight of the parade was the great Apple Float, an enormous motorized apple; the Apple Harvest Queen stands in the top of the float and throws Beauneville Beauties to the spectators.
There was something new this year: a scrapple float, consisting of a great block of scrapple mounted on a pickup truck. The sponsors considered flinging scrapple to the crowd, but parade marshals vetoed this idea because it would be messy.
The parade wound its way to Beauneville Park, where the ladies of Beauneville presented apple desserts of all sorts: many kinds of apple pie, plus apple crisp, apple custard, apple brown betty, apple fluff, caramel apples, deep-fried apples, chocolate-covered apples and the most spectacular apple dessert of all, apples dipped in caramel and chocolate, then deep-fried.
The ladies made applesauce, too. Thousands of jars of the stuff, carefully labeled as to apple variety and vintage and offered for display on long, groaning tables. Each year, the denizens of Beauneville restock their pantries with jars of applesauce made by the women of Beauneville. The rules of the applesauce exchange are clear: give a jar, take a jar; Mrs. Fennel and Miss Lovelace stand by the table strictly enforcing the one-for-one rule. Experienced traders like Mrs. Smith have long since learned which ladies make the best applesauce, and which ladies are better suited to simpler tasks, such as boiling water.
The menfolk manned the barbecue pit and did not disappoint. There were great pork roasts, toasted over the hot coals; plus pork burgers, pork chops, many kinds of pork sausage and, of course, scrapple.
In the morning, Mary Bloom logs on and checks the latest rumors on Amanda Dennis' blog, Cries and Whispers:
What Jane Austen wannabe has eyes for the Swedish bombshell, among others?
What "virgin" is thought to have blown a Stapleton lad in the back seat of his Chevrolet?
What Beauneville Latin teacher is boffing one of his "special needs" students?
What budding pianist needs a cherry, because she lost hers?
What hottie has a rather dominating personality?
Amanda knows all.
Mary frowns. It wasn't a Chevrolet. And where does she get off calling me "special needs"?
Of course, Amanda is simply following the cardinal rule of journalism: when you don't have a story, make one up. Roderick and Molly, for example, neither fulfilled their pledge to one another nor violated it; Amanda saw them leave the dance early, put two and two together and came up with five.
