Down Home Days, part IV

After the frog hop, we wander around for a bit. We investigated the Madison museum of historical treasures (I may be getting the name wrong). The museum was well put together, and contained some old books, clothing and furniture, along with the local junior high school’s yearbooks, which contained the records of schoolchildren from kindergarten to seventh grade. These yearbooks were about the size of a large church bulletin.

After we finish walking around, we decide to take a driving tour of Madison to see Katie’s high school.

Note: the following post is simply a retelling of the way things played out and the lack of tangible facts any locals were able to give us about the subject.

Down Home Days, part III

The Frog Hop

At about 1:20, we go over to the designated frog-jumping area.

I see the so-called “swamp,” which is a 9-square-foot piece of fake grass. The judges, who are Katie’s father, uncle and a biologist at the local community college, are wetting the swamp with a cupful of water.

Andrea asks why the judges are wearing scrubs.

Katie states the obvious: “Because it’s official.”

I notice a 3-foot-tall kid carrying a Styrofoam water cooler.

“Is there a frog in there?” I ask Katie.

“Is the sky blue?” she replies.

Then the voice of the MC, the town veterinarian, comes over the microphone, announcing the beginning of the 18th annual frog hop.

Down Home Days, part II

As Katie pointed out in the last post’s comments, the official name of the festival is “The Four Freedoms Festival,” otherwise known as Down Home Days, no hyphen. These corrections being made, I will proceed.

The festival

We walk downtown from Katie’s house, which takes about three minutes.

As Andrea points out, it looks like River City in “The Music Man.” There is a town square, complete with a gazebo, where the high-school band is playing.

Gazebo, complete with jazz band. (Photo by Andrea Asuaje)

We meet Katie’s Uncle Tim, the county clerk who rides a golf cart in the parade.

This year, he rode the float with his two dogs. Apparently, one of the dogs, Bobby Lee, did not behave and barked at the constituents along the parade route.

“You’re losing votes, Bobby Lee,” Tim said.

Tim encourages us not to miss the frog jump. We assure him that we won’t.

Down-Home Days

Weeks ago, my friend Katie Sanders invited me to a festival in her hometown of Madison, Fla.

Down-Home Days, according to Katie, had it all: small-town atmosphere, food, craft booths and, most importantly, a FROG-JUMPING contest.

Of course, after hearing the words “frog-jumping contest,” I was in.

I was slightly disappointed when I heard that I wouldn’t be able to wear my wide-brimmed straw hat that has never left my closet (“Well, everyone wears Abercrombie & Fitch, so it’s not like you’d fit in.”).

But I recovered from the dashed hope of straw-hat wearing, and Saturday morning, I left with Katie and our friends Andrea and Ashley to make the pilgrimage to Madison.

I, like newspaper readers, have a short attention span

When I was little, from the ages of about 7 to 12, I used to start random projects of “improving myself.”

These “projects” usually involved some type of cooking, reading books I didn’t really want to read (often poetry or something about Camelot) and starting journals.

I think I started about eight journals during that five-year period. I only kept one of them for more than two weeks.

My pursuit of a blog has been kind of like that.

Consider my most recent blog, Questions of Science.

It was a good idea and a good start. Soon, it dwindled off due to classes, and I was lucky to post once a month.

I honestly don’t have time to go through the plethora of science journalism out there and analyze it. That would be a full-time job, and I’m already a full-time student. I hope to continue commenting on science journalism here, as science journalism is also frustrating, but my thoughts on science journalism weren’t enough to fill a blog daily.

I still want to write a blog, though. My frustrations with and thoughts on journalism are probably enough to fill encyclopedic volumes.

Hopefully, this won’t go the way of my tweenage self-improvement projects.