A Hot FloydFest Date
At first I thought my husband, Joe, had sold his soul to the FloydFest devil.
Since he took the job of coordinating parking at the festival, I hadn’t seen him for days. For the past five years, he’s volunteered his time in exchange for a weekend pass, but this year, as the Floyd High soccer coach, he signed on to head up one of the hardest behind the scenes jobs. In exchange the FF promoters will make a substantial donation to the soccer program.
In years past, Joe and I watched many of our Floyd friends whiz around on golf carts while taking care of FloydFest business, as we lowly festival goers trudged around the sprawling site on foot. There looked to be a certain appeal to being in the immediate FF family and having entry to places festival goers don’t go. But we rarely saw those same friends on the dance floor, hanging out in the beer garden, spinning a hula hoop, climbing the climbing wall, having their fortune’s read, or sitting in a fold-up lawn chair in front of the main stage for a performance.
I knew if I wanted to spend any time with Joe I would have to come into the fold and see FF through the windshield of a golf cart. I had earned my own pink sparkly wristband, a weekend pass for performing poetry with a woman’s ensemble on a Global Village Stage, but hanging out with Joe gave me VIP status. Not only were we able to enjoy the back stage hospitality tent, where we were served food and beer on tap, I discovered there were other hospitality stations further back in the back stage of the FF world, some with comfy couches.
He picked me up in the golf cart for our “date.” I pulled in close and put my arm around him as he drove. Feeling like a Jedi zooming through the back woods pathways, I wondered how fast a golf cart could actually go and shouted, more than once, “Watch out, don’t hit anyone!” I took pictures as we tooled through the crowds, down the winding cart paths, up to the entrance at the Blue Ridge Parkway, where I snapped one of the parking lot, the result of days of Joe’s and other volunteer’s hard work.
We hopped out of the cart so that Joe could give me a tour of FF headquarters, the on-site trailer where twenty or so walkie talkies were spread out on a table being charged, computers were lit up, and several busy people were talking all at once. Down by the old barn by the pond, Joe filled up the cart at what I called the FF gas station.
On more than one occasion our date was interrupted with walkie talkie talk, a run to the front gate to attend to a problem, or to train a replacement volunteer. “This is my wife,” Joe announced to all the volunteer workers he stopped to talk to. I had a black cherry ice cream in a homemade waffle cone from a nearby vendor’s stand while he briefly attended a meeting.
Sometimes we parked the golf cart. Although Joe was able to attend my 3:30 poetry performance, OUTLOUD, he missed the readings later at the Coffee Bus, in which I and other poets took turns jumping up on a makeshift soapbox and reading (shouting) poetry, mostly about Peter Pan. We edged out on the ledge like Peter as we read. When I jumped off the box, making room for the next poet, I pretended I was jumping off Captain Hook’s plank.
We actually danced to the whole set of Donna the Buffalo. Scanning the crowd while dancing, I spotted several people I knew bobbing like surfers in an ocean of people. After sunset we followed the moon. It was rising full behind the main stage. A coolness descended on the mountain, as Joe walked me to my car, where we kissed goodnight to the tune of Cat Empire’s final song. It was the end of a perfect date (and I didn’t have to open my umbrella once).