Amy Lu's View

My high school mascot was The Beavers.

My hometown summer festival (although I didn’t actually live in “the town” of 1,500 but in the country) was Bean and Bacon Days.

Just enjoy both those facts for a moment. I think they tell you a lot about my formative years.

During this Fourth of July Season, I’ve been reminiscing a lot about Bean and Bacon Days as it was always celebrated around the Fourth of July.

Now I’m tempted to make this blog a snark fest about how my current sophisticated self is bemused by the goofiness of Bean and Bacon Days. But the world really doesn’t need any more amateur snark these days.

It would also be pretty hypocritical of me to imply that I thought Bean and Bacon Days was odd or silly in any way. For most of my youth, I didn’t even question it–I don’t think I even realized it was in honor of the Bush’s bean factory in our town (which does suggest it was a bit of a failure as a marketing endeavor). It was Just The Way Things Were–didn’t everybody celebrate Bean and Bacon Days every summer?

For me, the highlight of the Bean and Bacon Days festivities was theatrical–no surprise. Our youth summer theater performances were held during B&B Days. In fact, I think my theater origin story is rooted in those days, because my mom enrolled me in the program (and drove me to daily rehearsals). I think my first production was “Alice in Wonderland” and I was cast as The March Hare (NOT the White Rabbit, as everyone always assumed, thank you very much!).

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From that first taste of theater, I was hooked. Several plays based on fairy tale classics: “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Empress’s New Clothes,” “The Red Shoes” and “The Pied Piper Of Hamelin” (which we heavily re-wrote) followed (not necessarily in that order).

Yes, I was over the moon when I was cast as Snow White in, you guessed it, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” I was shallowly impressed to be the “title” character and therefore “lead” even though it wasn’t that exciting of a part. We also did a hippie 60’s version which was probably as silly and painful as it sounds (luckily and/or unfortunately, this was all in days before any of us rural folk had video recording devices).

And you may have noticed that we did “The Empresses’s New Clothes” which had far more to do with casting desperation than 80’s era wokeness, and I also got to be that title character. But that was more terrifying than exciting, and I wore LONG underwear. (Yes, if I was cast in that role today I would be advocating to have my costume include a garter belt).

(Okay, I promise I won’t turn this into a recap of every Augusta children’s summer theater role I had, although I am very tempted to do so. Maybe snark would be better? AND can I follow a sentence in a parenthesis with a whole section in parenthesis?)

In many ways, summer felt like a downhill slide after B&B Days/the Fourth (we were also living on rural time so we got out of school in mid-May and started up again at the end of August). I’m sure I didn’t know what the solstice was back then, but it’s appropriate that this all happened a couple of weeks after the solstice. It was definitely the zenith of my year in many ways.

In addition to my theater memories, I also have some recollections of marching in the parade in extremely hot wool band uniforms and cursing the flutists who had light instruments to carry (as opposed to my snare drum that actually wasn’t all that heavy but bruised my leg), and street dances, and eventually, the Miss Augusta Contest. Oh my, yes, Miss Augusta COULD be a whole ‘nother post if not blog.

And no, I only did not win Miss Augusta but lost in a very non-climatic way–not with bang, but with a whimper–even though my talent was playing drums. Maybe getting in the Too Beautiful Too Live talent show for playing drums was some redemption?

I don’t have many recollections of bacon, though. I wasn’t a vegetarian or even a pseudo-Wisconsin-70’s vegetarian then, but I think this was before bacon was super trendy.

*Since bacon IS trendy now, did this title make you read this?