Festival weather
By Jennifer Roblez
Originally published 02:12 p.m., October 9, 2007
Updated 02:12 p.m., October 9, 2007
Emporian Charlene Hotzel reminded me Sunday she knew me before I was me. This is why I love St. Joseph’s Fall Festival in Olpe. It’s a trip down memory lane.
Charlene was saying hello to my mother and, yes, she knew my family before I joined it. I also ran across Emporia native Marcia Rues of Flower Mound, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, who went to school with my older sister.
Sunday was a super day for the festival, which raises about $10,000 for St. Joseph’s School each fall. In the spring, the parish holds its spring festival with a similar fundraising goal.
When I learned Sunday morning that we were going to the festival, I grabbed a rake and worked up an appetite. The festival’s menu is daunting.
As the afternoon wore on, dog bathing got added to the chore list.
We left for Olpe on Kansas Highway 99 close to 4 p.m. On the drive south, an ominous cloud could be seen forming, and while I’m sure I only imagined a counter-clockwise rotation, I grew worried.
My mother didn’t seem alarmed but rivaled Clint Bowyer’s speed while racing away from the growing blackness.
I kept my eye on it, alert for lightning more than rain. I guess I’ve been away from Kansas for too long. In Texas, lightning can strike a person dead even on a clear day.
We parked off Iowa Street. By then, St. Joseph’s Church stood in the foreground of mournful night. No one cared.
A few folks had umbrellas, but kids were playing skee ball and other ticket games. Farmers, well-fed after the feast, chatted in small groups. I seemed to be the only one thinking an apocalypse was passing overhead. Gaiety triumphed.
After paying for our meal and buying a few raffle tickets, I came across a dish of caramel apples for carryout. The two ladies selling the baked goods, noodles and pies reminded me the apples might be gone after I had dinner. A cool breeze began to blow through the basement windows and I wondered out loud if it had started to rain. It hadn’t.
“You don’t have to worry about that here,” one of the women said when I recounted my story of the black cloud. “It’s when you’re on the turnpike that you have to watch out.”
St. Joseph’s students had gone to a lot of trouble to decorate. Leaves made good angel wings hanging from the ceiling — fall angels, they were called, (not fallen, I smirked). To get to dinner, you walked along a wall decorated with drawings of kids’ guardian angels. One said, “My angel looks like she’s 20.” Another said simply, “My angel has tan skin and is tall.”
With that, I turned my attention to the main course of dessert (it comes first), ham or beef, or a little of both, and big spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and corn.
The side dishes make this dinner truly special — sauerkraut, dressing, beets and pickles, candied yams, rolls, Jell-O — the supply seems endless. The seatmate or server who brings these wonders to you becomes an instant best friend.
After dinner, we walked over to the church. All the stained glass still was intact.
We drove back to Emporia and could see telltale signs of rain. A quarter-inch had fallen, we later learned.
But not a drop hit us.