...more.....The Country Western Music festival

The weekend invitation was for the purpose of attending the Country Music festival in Crappone-sur-Arzon, not to be confused with Crappone (without the "sur-Arzon"). They like to use the same name for many towns here. But with the tacked-on "sur-Arson" or other little words like that, they are very different names altogether. It must be a way to confuse Americans!

So we arrived at the festival and parked the car in a field nearby and I wondered how in the world we would find it again. We walked past a campground where many festival-goers spent the previous night in small tents. We got to the gates to purchase our ticket and stood in line there for a while. We finally got inside and I thought I had fallen asleep and woken up at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Nearly everyone there had on a cowboy hat and boots. If they weren't wearing that, then they had on "indian" attire - lots of leather with fringe hanging off. Many people were wearing chaps. I had brought a red bandana just to have my own bit of "flair" but I didn't see many of those - instead, people were wearing bandanas of the American flag. Many people had on shirts or sweaters bearing the stars and stripes, or even the stars and bars. The American flag was flying everywhere and the Texas flag was pretty prevalent too. And if you didn't have enough Country-Western paraphanalia, there were plenty of booths that were selling more. There was a full 18-wheeler trailer set up to sell only cowboy boots and hats. Cowboy........that's pronounced......... "co- bo-we".

So after getting over the inital shock of it all, we walked around for a while then found a place to sit on the grass. The first band that played was from the Netherlands but their name was "The Texas Renegades". They were really good. And they sang with an authentic-sounding Texas accent. There were other bands from all over the world, all playing country music. Fascinating. And just like at the "Night of Soul" concert we attended where I thought it interesting that the artists get a very quiet applause, same thing happened here. After each number, the people just politely clapped, as if they were at the opera.

Eating there was pretty interesting too. The food vendors were selling very American food. For the first time, we saw corn on the cob being sold to humans. There were plenty of barbeque places and even a Tex-Mex booth! We left the festival when our hosts became dissappointed that the music was sounding too "rock" and not "country" enough.