It’s nice to take a road trip every once in a while. You see things you don’t normally see.
We drove north on I-5 all day Friday. If you think there’s a whole lot of nothing along the highways in your state, you should try driving eight hours up I-5 in California.
Finally, as night fell, we arrived at our initial destination: Corning, California. Never heard of it? Neither had we. We chose it because it was halfway to Portland, Oregon, our next destination.
Not until we looked up Corning on the Web did we realize we had stumbled upon an adventure. Corning is home to the great annual Olive Festival, which happened to be the weekend we were in town!
On Saturday morning, we made our way to a local park, where men were grilling hotdogs…
Vendors were selling tchotchkes and stuff…
And Miss Corning (with tiara and cat), Miss First Alternate and Miss Congeniality were available for chitchat.
A city council member in a trucker hat even gave us a little lecture on olives, using examples growing right there in the park.
We were meeting the whole of Corning society, right there at the festival. Everybody knew everybody else, including the resident World War II veteran and ballroom dancer extraordinaire…
…and the Marlboro Man cowboy…
… who brought out the cow for Cow Chip Bingo, a game enjoyed far more by the citizens of Corning than by the cow herself…
Place your bets! Pick a numbered square! Where will the cow leave her chip? Having witnessed a particularly messy round of Cow Chip Bingo, I recommend that if you find yourself at the Corning Olive Festival, you spend your time instead perusing the main attraction: the olives and their associated wares.
Thank you, good people of Corning!
Cow chip bingo…sounds like my kind of sport,being a veteran of cow pie throwing competitions.
Nice pictures. Sounds like a fun time, and a fun cast of characters.
LP, YOU look Tiara-ready!
What great luck! Olives definitely deserve festivals.
That looks so fun. I love small-town festivals.
Wow, cow chip bingo!? That’s wild.
Thanks for the report, and thanks especially for your gregarious engagement of the locals to enhance our appreciation of it all.
But what, oh what, was the most out-there olive product you saw? Was there green olive ice cream? Chocolate-covered nicoise? Do tell!
Also, any responses to your Obama button?
OMG! I am SO jealous. Seriously. Corning – who knew? Gillian Welch mentions Corning in one of her songs (Revelator). Plus I LOVE olives, unlike a certain someone. It shoulda been me!
Thanks for the fun post. So what was the most interesting thing you learned about olives? What turns black olives black, do they grow on the tree like that? The only reason I’m asking, is that green olives that have not been in the brine taste like black olives…
Having taken a crack at olive brining, I know that there are black varieties and green varieties that grow separately from each other.
Really? I thought the black ones were ripe and the green ones weren’t.
7. Gillian Welch is one of my favorites. I hadn’t made the Corning connection in Revelator, but yes, she goes on to sing about leaving the Valley and going back to Cali, so the geography would be right.
9 and 10 are not mutually exclusive: there could be a variety of olives that you pick when they are unripe, and a separate variety that you allow to ripen before you pick them. Not saying that’s true, because I don’t know; just sayin’.
I did not know Gillian Welch was from the Central Valley. Somehow I thought she was from Boston.
12. Yes, that could be true. The ones I brined were both their respective colors when ripe. That’s all I know about olives (other than that they’re yummy!)
11. & 13. I’m not sure where she was born, but I know that she grew up in Santa Monica. She probably knows about Corning from driving through there on her way to some gig in Northern Cal.
She isn’t from the Central Valley. She is from Los Angeles. But geographically speaking, she is probably singing about the Central Valley and LP’s Corning, no? Her album covers remind me of Dorothea Lange’s work in the Central Valley. She is channeling that hardscrabble life, and if she grew up in Los Angeles, that would probably reference the great San Joaquin, with its lovesick daughters and their colors that I’d never seen.
Huh, I don’t really know her music much except the album she did with Robyn Hitchcock. I think I assumed she was from Boston because I heard an interview with her where she made reference to having met Robyn in a record store in Boston.
Modesto, I think that you’re thinking of someone else – I’m not aware of Gillian Welch and Robyn Hitchcock doing an album together. Checking allmusic now….
I stand corrected. The album is called “Spooked”. Here’s the link: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:w9fixqlsldhe
Where have I been? Oh yeah, listening to droves of bad music.
I stand corrected. Where have I been? Oh, yeah, I know, listening to droves of bad music. I would post a link but then my comment won’t show up, so you can go to allmusic (dot)com and type in Robyn Hitchcock, then look for the album “Spooked” under the discography tab.
You get one link per comment without your comment going into moderation, omnibus.
cool – is that automatic? I actually tried posting #18 with a link and it didn’t show up. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong. I shoulda learned html when I had the chance.
Huh. It was in the spam queue, don’t know why. There’s some fancy algorithm for that kind of thing.
Jenomnibus, it is a fantastic record. You ought to listen to it. It made me want to listen to Welch’s solo stuff, I just have not gotten around to it yet.
Corning in the news.
Love the post!
Love Gillian Welch!
(BTW – one of your very own tgw writers was once the Ms. Congeniality of a small time festival herself – trophy still sits on the dresser)
For a sample tune from Spooked, try Demons and Fiends.
You should definitely listen to her “solo” stuff (really, it’s her and David Rawlings). I recommend the albums Hell Among The Yearlings, Revival, and Time The Revelator.
1 – Ah yes, Stella took part in a spirited round of cow-chip-tossing at a county fair a few years back. Beware the errant toss — she almost took out a spectator with her flying chip.
6 – Corning isn’t terribly out there in terms of its olive products, I’m afraid. Most interesting were the flavored oils and vinegars, which were delicious. We filled up on bread while dipping in the various oils. RB did enjoy an almond-stuffed olive, which looked delicious if you happen to like olives.
Re: the Obama button — I actually bought it there! I didn’t see a great deal of activity at the Obama booth, but neither did they seem to be pariahs.
8 – The only thing I recall about the councilman’s olive lecture was that you cut around the middle of the olive to determine if it’s ripe. You can slide off the olive meat if it is. The rest of the time, I was busy trying to take a good picture. I can’t do two things at once, apparently. RB’s recollection, I believe, was that the black ones are riper than the green.
Whoops – RB says her recollection is that the councilman claimed only green olives grow on trees. He says the black ones have been treated somehow to get that color.
From wikipedia, Knower of All Things:
“Olives are harvested at the green stage or left to ripen to a rich purple colour (black olive). Canned black olives may contain chemicals that turn them black artificially.”
eeeww. Really? Who knew?
yum, olives!
(oops, i meant to say: yum, lisa parrish!)
Olive you, too, Jeremy. (someone had to do it!)
aw! olive you right back!
Olive you guys are just too adorable for words.
I think olive just about everything about this post, comments included.
one of your very own tgw writers was once the Ms. Congeniality of a small time festival herself – trophy still sits on the dresser
PB! Ms. Congeniality!
greAT POST
My family love to stop and buy olives in Corning. They stuff them with all sorts of things like almonds, blue cheese and sardines! I think I’ve seen cow chip bingo with sheep too. So much fun waiting for animals to lay a log.