Moonshines In My Cider

This needs to be read with a very southern draw accent!!!!

Moonshines In My Cider

That’s how it all started. Everyone knows it, ‘cuz legends are like that ‘round here. And there be lots of ‘em, legends, that is! Them stories of how it all began will capture your ‘magination. Hell, they might even challenge your normal ok thinkin’..to keep bein’ normal and ok. All I can say, you gotta see it to believe it, ‘cuz as far as I can tell, this is the only place on this here planet puttin’ on somethin’ this wild and this preposterous! It’s October, and I ain’t kiddin’ when I tell ya that Charlie Brown and Linus? Man, they be revered here more than Jesus and Elvis, and considerin’ this be Georgia an’ the Bible Belt, that’s sayin’ something. Funny thing is? Not one single Soul showin’ up for The Annual Frog Bottom Creek Nearly-Nak’d Giant Floatin’ Pumpkin Festival agrees on it’s humble beginnins.
Joe Cooper, he be our unofficial mayor. He likes to swing back shots of MoonshinesInMyCider down at The Toasty Toad, always remindin’ us town folk ,“Ya’ll can’t claim to be of humble beginnins when yous in your skivies, tryin’ yous best to steer big-ass giant pumpkins on the stillest water this side of the Stewart county line!” Yep. You heard me right. Just some grown-ass adults, wearin’ their favorite undies and the craziest pumpkin stem hats they can make with that there paper machay stuff, some old house paint and those freaky green feathers they thinks look like leaves waving in the wind! Yes sir, there you’ll see ‘em, manning the helms of thousand pound orange pumpkins they done grew themselves. A whole week of carving out the guts and gettin’ them paddles to work, just so they can drink beer and go bellying up to each other, like they was bumper cars down at the Frog Bottom kiddie park .
And you be askin’ me how this all started? Well, I say you go down to that creek and stand next to someone lookin’ on for a stretch. By, God, you’ll hear “the real story” of how it all started! Maybe you can find Ol’ Minny Simpson there. She be turnin’ ninety-two this December and ain’t missed one of these in near thirty years. Ol’ Minny, she got a story better than all the rest. Go stand next to some other somebody, and for sure, before you learns their name, you’ll be knowin’ “the actual real story” how it all started. And not one word of that story will match anythin’ Ol’ Minny tells ya!
Funny thing no one ever wrote it down. Who growed that first Great Pumpkin’? Even funnier thing I’m always askin’, who done carved it out and made a goddamn boat out of it? ‘Fore ya know it, whole damn town starts a growin’ em! Frog Bottom Creek been a hallowed fishbowl for these floatin’ freaks of nature every Halloween for so long I’ll be damned if I can remember how or when it all started. And I ain’t even referrin’ to the pumpkins! One year the weather ‘round here was so warm people drivin’ them things just took their damn clothes right off and let ‘em float. Them clothes has been floatin’ ever since!
You stayin’ a while? ‘Cuz if you is and you show up this year, watchin’ these crazies ‘till the very end, why you, too, can captivate ‘maginations Maybe even challenge some of that normal ok thinkin’. ‘Cuz, hell, if you don’t go and come up with your very own version! You be tellin’ people, “And that’s how it all started! Everyone knows it, ‘cuz legends are like that ‘round here.”