As we have traveled around this Midwest area, we have been impressed with how many towns are named like others we are familiar with: Florida, Dallas City, Salem, Birmingham, Pittsburg, Pulaski, Charleston, Washington, Canton, Cuba, Denver, Topeka, Lewiston, Payson, Columbus, even Mechanicsburg- all cities in Illinois and Iowa. We spent Friday evening in West Point, Iowa for the 69th annual Sweetcorn Festival. It reminded me a little of our hometown, Dryden, NY and the annual Dryden Dairy Days.
It had the same feeling of gathering widespread neighbors in from the farms for a favorite small-town America event. I don't know if they had a parade like Dairy Days. We went on the 2nd night of 3, which is bigger than Dryden's event. There was a pleasant small-town patriotism evident everywhere, especially in this veterans memorial. Every country in the world has veterans and it's good to remember their efforts and sacrifices. We watched some kids from a local small dance studio. There were booths set up exhibiting locally made crafts for sale as well as things like Pampered Chef and pre-made mixes for soups and dips. Besides the multi-night facet, this event is bigger than Dryden's in that there were lots of carnival rides and midway games. That reminded us more of the NY State Fair in Syracuse, only this was smaller than that. But the big draw here, the namesake of the Festival was SWEETCORN! It's trucked in by the tractor-trailer load and cooked in the huge boilers you can barely see on the truck bed on the left in the picture below. Local people take turns for a "shucking shift" to prepare the corn for being cooked. When done, the corn is placed on long
tables in pans. You grab a tissue paper (like bakeries use) to grab your hot ear of corn, then take it to tables that have butter and salt on them. After you eat your ear, you throw it on the dumptruck bed (hard to see in these pictures but it's just past the tables in line with the basketball hoop) then get back in line for another. And it's all FREE! Because I hadn't eaten anything since 9:30 am and that was just some vegetables and a granola bar, I got a chicken dinner.
The dinner included 1/2 a barbequed chicken (not NEARLY as good as Cornell chicken), beans, potato salad, a drink, and of course an ear of corn. Russ only wanted the corn so he rotated through the line 7 times, getting his fill of freshly picked sweet corn!
Just to mention a couple of things truly unique to the area, Russ was quite fascinated by this wood-burning tractor. It is an antique that has been maintained over the years, along with a collection of nearly 100 which we may go to see in Mt. Pleasant in September, of farm equipment. It works as a tractor as well as a thresher. You put wood in a box, just like coal in an old train engine, and the fire heats water to make steam which runs the engine. It can go 4 hours on one
tank of water. They demonstrated it working but didn't actually move it. The plastic fence around it kept the curious from getting close enough to get hurt or damage the antique.
The other thing that we found unique to this area near the Mississippi, right along with the usual hot dogs, hamburgers, cotton candy, soda, ice cream, and sausage sandwiches, was the food offering on this sign. It was basically a chunk of alligator meat, battered and deep-fried and sold on a stick. It was not something we ever saw at Dryden Dairy Days or the NY State Fair!
tables in pans. You grab a tissue paper (like bakeries use) to grab your hot ear of corn, then take it to tables that have butter and salt on them. After you eat your ear, you throw it on the dumptruck bed (hard to see in these pictures but it's just past the tables in line with the basketball hoop) then get back in line for another. And it's all FREE! Because I hadn't eaten anything since 9:30 am and that was just some vegetables and a granola bar, I got a chicken dinner. 
The dinner included 1/2 a barbequed chicken (not NEARLY as good as Cornell chicken), beans, potato salad, a drink, and of course an ear of corn. Russ only wanted the corn so he rotated through the line 7 times, getting his fill of freshly picked sweet corn!
The other thing that we found unique to this area near the Mississippi, right along with the usual hot dogs, hamburgers, cotton candy, soda, ice cream, and sausage sandwiches, was the food offering on this sign. It was basically a chunk of alligator meat, battered and deep-fried and sold on a stick. It was not something we ever saw at Dryden Dairy Days or the NY State Fair! 
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