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Corn Fest 2004 It was good to see so many people at the Corn Fest this year.
I just decided I would go all out this time and join in some of the
festivities. I began early Saturday
morning by taking part in the Knox County Health Department’s WALK-RUN,
although I was only planning on the first half of that WALK-RUN word.
I thought I would just put on my tennis shoes and get there
early. However, I soon discovered
that a little sole
searching was in order. I
couldn’t find my shoes! I hunted
for them for half an hour before I remembered that I left them in the truck.
Of course, my husband had left with the truck earlier that morning. I
didn’t have time to track him down and I was about to give up participating,
but at the last moment I grabbed my black summer sandals and decided to just go
anyway. I got there just in time to fill out the registration form
before the event began. All that I
had to do was sign a paper that said if I died, it wouldn’t be their fault.
They must have known I was coming, because I saw an ambulance nearby too.
Was it my imagination or was everyone looking at my sandals? I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw people getting ready to
participate with baby carriages and small children. Maybe there was hope for me after all. Someone gave the order to begin and we were off and running,
or in my case, off and walking! We started by going downhill and I thought this was going to
be a piece of cake but then it suddenly dawned on me that we were probably going
to have to come back up that hill. I was wrong about that piece of cake.
The cell phone in my pocket suddenly became very important to me.
As I trudged up that hill beside the sale barn (ah fresh
morning air!), I suddenly had flashbacks of that first winter when I lived in
West Virginia. I spent most of that
winter trudging up the hill to my house because the car couldn’t make it up
the hill in the snow. I was trying to console myself by thinking what a beautiful
day it was for the Corn Fest and at least it wasn’t cold.
I felt a little ashamed of myself when I saw preschool children trotting
right along with no problem, taking 3 steps to their parent’s single stride. While walking, there was a lot of time to think and I
couldn’t help but question why we call it the 1k or 5k WALK-RUN.
Why do we use the “k”? I
know the “k” stands for kilometer, but I think it should be spelled
“killometer” with emphasis on the “kill” part when it comes to these
WALK-RUN events. However, I
don’t know why we can’t just walk a mile these days like we did back when I
was a child. I did manage to get through the WALK-RUN… hills, sandals,
and all! I watched some of
the runners come in who were older than me and I thought maybe there is still
hope for me to run some of those “k’s” next year. The Corn Fest was a success once again this year.
The parade, the music, the booths, and the food were all really good.
The best part was getting to see some people that I hadn’t seen in
years. There were other
people who looked very familiar. Maybe
nametags would be a good idea! By Pamela Perry Blaine © October 2004
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