Imperial Valley (Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) by Johnny Shaw

Author:Johnny Shaw [Shaw, Johnny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503941298
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
Published: 2017-03-06T18:30:00+00:00

When the Holtville Carrot Festival rolled around in February, Angie and I decided to loosen the tether. Keeping Juan cooped up when he knew there were rides, games, cotton candy, and a parade bordered on criminal. The unpredictability of crowds concerned me, but Juan needed to be a kid. Hindsight would tell me if it was a good idea.

In the classic Warner Brothers cartoon “Bully for Bugs,” Bugs Bunny ends up in a bullring on his way to the Coachella Valley and “the big carrot festival therein.” Contrary to popular belief, relying on a cartoon character for accuracy when it comes to regional events is a mistake. Bugs Bunny is not a credible source. If you take a wrong turn in Albuquerque, you won’t end up in Timbuktu. That’s science fact. And duck season and rabbit season are concurrent, so Elmer Fudd should have shot both Bugs and Daffy.

The carrot festival is not in the Coachella Valley, but in my hometown of Holtville, California, in the Imperial Valley. Holtville is the self-proclaimed carrot capital of the world. Every winter for the last seventy years, there had been the carrot festival, which included a parade, a carnival, cooking contests, a 5K run, a rib cook-off, and a whole bunch more small town awesomeness. It’s an all-week event culminating in one of the best parades on the planet. They always get the coolest people to act as grand marshal. Quaint and fun and enthusiastic and full of charm. Not flashy, but real. I couldn’t imagine missing it and couldn’t let Juan miss it either.

Juan was scheduled to ride with the other Cub Scouts on the fire engine. He’d been looking forward to it for months. I usually rode on Bobby’s float, which was just a tractor hauling a trailer with a few bales of hay on it and a sign that said, “The So You Want to Be on a Float Float.” It was exactly that. Anybody who wanted to be on a float could jump aboard. Usually a hodgepodge of kids and their parents singing along to one of Bobby’s mixtapes. Which meant they better like Warrant and Whitesnake, because that’s mostly what would be playing.

I had my sights set on entering my carrot latkes in the cooking contest. My “Carrot Surprise” the previous year had been a dumpster fire of a meal, an unmitigated disaster. Apparently, the “surprise” was that other people found the combination of hot dogs and carrots disgusting. My friends still gave me a hard time about it. The most common was someone saying the word “Surprise” while they pretended to vomit. It hurt.

But if I let embarrassing failure stop me from doing things, I wouldn’t get out of bed. And I definitely wouldn’t have invented the Napeau, a hat with a pillow attached.

I had been experimenting with flavor combinations for the last three months in an effort to redeem myself. For those keeping score, I settled on a spice base of paprika, cumin, and a touch of chili powder.

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