This summer Berlin Heights had the annual Basket Festival. It was very nice and the parade was pretty good as well. However, this festival pales in comparison to the old annual Harvest Festival we used to have on Labor Day weekend. My memories of the Harvest Festival are very vivid from the 1950's and early 60's. I'm not sure when the Harvest Festival was first started in Berlin Heights, but I suspect it was years earlier. If I sadly recall, the Harvest Festival ceased in the early 60's or so.

 

One of my most glowing memories of the festival is the apple butter cooking. They would build a fire under a very large metal cauldron and make the apple butter from scratch. It looked like a witch's cauldron and they would stir the apple butter with a big long wooden paddle. The aroma would waft through the air and it smelled good. I never cared too much for apple butter. As far as I was concerned, it was like gasoline, it smelled good, but tasted terrible! On certain occasions, I buy a jar of apple butter, not to eat, but to put into the microwave just to experience that wonderful aroma again.

 

The parade was really big, or it seemed so to our "kid perception" at the time.  It was always led by the Berlin Heights American Legion members who formed the color guard with rifles and the American flag on one side and the American Legion flag on the other side. As a kid, I always wished I could be in the  American Legion and  do that too. Well, several years later, I did indeed march in the Color Guard as an American Legion member for the Memorial Day parade. They had several floats made around a hay wagon and decorated with tissue paper stuffed though chicken wire. We kids would tie balloons on the fender brace of our bicycles and push the balloon between the brace and the wheel spokes. This produced a "whump whump" sound that sounded vaguely like a real motorcycle. We would then grab the edge of a float and be pulled along with the balloon "whump whump" sound. No one ever prevented us from doing that and we felt like we were part of the big parade. When the balloon finally burst, it sounded like a backfire from our "motorcycle". Sometimes we would put a balloon on each side of the spokes and that really sounded cool, a 2 cylinder motorcycle!

 

The food at the concession stands was the best! I can still taste the onion rings and French fries! One unusual thing they always had was a vinegar dispenser for the French fries. I tried it on mine once, but found I preferred catsup after all. Sometimes we would get "corn dogs" on a stick which were really good too. They always had a flower show in the school gymnasium, but we didn't go to that for 2 reasons. One is that we kids didn't care anything about flower arrangements and the other reason was that school started about 2 days after the festival and we would be in the school building soon enough so why volunteer to go into it before we had to! 

 

My very favorite part of the Harvest Festival was the fireworks on Sunday night at the conclusion of the festival. They also had fireworks on the 4^th of July too. Some of we kids, would wait until it was dark and sneak in behind where the fireworks were shot off at the south end of the school athletic field. We would hide in the trees and brush. It was really neat to be with a few feet of the mortar tubes where they were shot up in the air. Every now and then, someone would check the brush with a flashlight and we all quickly ducked in the brush. We were never caught! I guess the guy that scanned the area with his flashlight was near sighted!  On the following morning, as we carefully searched the area we always found little pieces of black stuff that looked like small chunks of coal. We found out that if we put a lighted match to them, they fizzled and produced a lot of smoke. I've always figured they were unburned pieces that fell back to the ground when the fireworks exploded.  Our biggest hope was to find an unused fireworks rocket that they forgot to fire and left there. This hope was never realized. However, it's just as well. Could you imagine Tim and I with a live fireworks rocket! Since then, I've looked all over the country and Mexico and Canada for the same kind of commercial rockets they use for fireworks, but have been unsuccessful so far. I guess you need some kind of a license to purchase them through some sales place unknown to "unlicensed" mortal men.

 

The biggest thing that overshadowed us during our fun at the Harvest Festival was that school started 2 days after it. At the end of the fireworks on Sunday night, we were really feeling down in the dumps. However, finding the black coal like stuff the next morning took a little of the edge off "our-back-to-school-the- next-day-anxieties".

 

The closest thing to fireworks we could buy at The Lake Erie Carry Out were "cracker balls". They were little colored balls wrapped with crepe paper and exploded by throwing them on the ground. We always made sure we had a good supply of them before the festival started and threw them all over the place and generally made nuisances of ourselves. In spite of that, no one ever confiscated them from us. I guess they were all caught up in the gala atmosphere of the festival. Speaking of "cracker balls", we really had fun throwing a big handful of them out of the car window at highway speeds. They would all go off seemingly at once. Our mother who was driving would yell at us to knock it off. By the time she said that, all of our "cracker balls" were expended anyway since we threw all of them out at once on the road. I sure wish we could purchase them now, but I'm sure the liberal tree hugger types have caused them to be banned these days.

During those early days of back to school, at least we had the great memories of the fun we had at the Harvest Festival, as I continue to have to this day.

 

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Oh, hey, while I'm on the subject of Berlin Heights, some of you readers may want to join my Yahoo Group about Berlin Heights. The only thing is if you're not a Yahoo member, you have to join Yahoo. It's free and very easy to join and besides, you'll have a swell email address with a web email account and it's all free! Hey, go ahead and join my group, what do you have to loose???? You will need my approval to join. Just give your name on the approval form and, of course, I will approve you and you're in! If you are interested, check out THIS LINK.