Fest is Short for Festival

My husband lived on Amelia Island when he was a Little League playing kid. He was a pitcher. He was a pitcher with a bad temper. He once told his catcher to let the baseball go by so that it hit the umpire who, Sherwood believed, was something that I can’t repeat. 

(I would repeat the something here, but I can’t repeat the something here because Sherwood was a nine-year-old with a foul mouth).

Sherwood’s family moved away from Amelia Island. 

Years passed.

Our oldest son moved with his family to Yulee, Florida which is due west of Amelia Island. Our family had come full circle, it would seem. So back we went to festival with the pirates over shrimp tacos and shrimp art—lots and lots of art depicting shrimp.

Amelia Island is the home of the Amelia Island Shrimp Festival. In Sherwood’s day, there were shrimp boat races, but they turned out to be less than thrilling, since shrimp boats only have to outrun shrimp. 

Now the Shrimp Festival features pirates, and a shrimp queen, a 5K run, and fifty ways to cook shrimp, and shrimp art.

I rather liked the endless, creative, and energetic renderings of shrimp. There were stained glass shrimp and paintings of shrimp and photographs of shrimp and shrimp sculptures and . . .

Art. Lots and lots of art.

“How do you like the art?” I asked my husband, the once foul mouthed baseball pitcher, as we wandered among the vendors.

“Hate it,” he said.

“All of it? Look! There’s a metal fish fountain with a shrimp inside it stomach, spitting water. How clever is that?”

“How much?” he asked.

“Much and many shrimp’s worth,” I said.

“Ridiculous.”

We kept walking.

Finally, he found a bit of art that appealed. It wasn’t shrimp related. It was a scantily clad mermaid. “I like that,” he said, pointing.

Our daughter-in-law summed it up, “Tasteful nudes. He likes tasteful nude paintings of mermaids.”

“Do they eat shrimp?” I wondered. No one answered, but I was willing to bet they did.

“How much,” he said. 

“Many and much shrimp,” I said.

“Ridiculous.”

“Agreed.”

“I need a tee-shirt with a pirate on it,” he said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

And that’s what puts the fest in festival. 

Linda (Two More Shrimp Tacos ) Zern