Summer, U.S.A.

And the festival going is easy

After months of gas lines, inflation, summitry and SALT debate, the coming of August brought a change of tempo and mood. Congress adjourned and Washington lapsed into sultry somnolence. All across the nation, though problems might be real enough, there was a sense of vacation, of enjoyment, even of celebration.

Tis the season of the festival, and a festival nowadays is a protean feast. It is a group of local notables trying to put clothes on live chickens in a contest at the Hamilton County Fair near Cincinnati. It is a baseball game at the New England Clown Convention in Salem, Mass., where no one knows who won because the bases kept moving and the umpire used a fire extinguisher to settle disputes. It is Cincinnati's Don Cook, who takes pride in being able to grow an instant beard by letting bees swarm to his chin. It is 102 vintage ships (minimum age: 25 years) sailing in the shadow of the Queen Mary during the Long Beach, Calif., Ancient Mariner's Regatta.

A festival is music filling the air or competing with fireworks. Manhattan's Central Park was packed with almost a quarter of a million people last week as the New York Philharmonic exploded into John Philip Sousa and giant skyrockets burst above the band shell. A festival is Chicago Secretary Janice Simpson puzzling over whether she should go hear Lonnie Listen Smith at the Miller beer Jazz Stage or Muddy Waters at the Olympia beer Blues Stage, playing at almost the same time at ChicagoFest, where more than 500,000 trooped to the city's old brick and metal Navy Pier last week.

(She found she could catch them both on different nights.) It may be tourists getting so caught up in the music at the ethnic dances of the Texas Folklife Festival that they jump onstage with the costumed dancers. Or Jazz Vibraphonist Gary Burton performing in Boston's Copley Square during one of the seven concerts a day scattered across the city by Summerthing.

A festival, of course, is also a feast, as in food. Says the slow-talking voice over the loudspeaker at the Ninth Annual Antique Powerland Farm Fair in Brooks, Ore. (pop. 400): "Those of you with a rumble in your belly come have some barbecued chicken and corn on the cob." Many of the 2,000 or so who were gawking at the steam-engined tractors and thrashers did just that. Gilroy, Calif., which claims the title of the Garlic Capital of the World, held its First Annual Garlic Festival last week, and Lloyd Harris explained: "There's something about garlic that creates excitement. People can get real loose around garlic." Bobby Waller liked it hot at the Hamilton County Fair, amid the frog-jumping, tobacco-spitting and Dolly Parton look-alike contests. At 16, he's billed as the world's youngest fire-eater.

Summer is every man a king and every woman a queen. Maria Elizabeth Julio was named Miss Italian Festival in Baltimore and headed for the pizza stand; Sally Stallings was Queen of the Old Spanish Days Fiesta parade in Santa Barbara, Calif., and rode among 150 floats and strutting flamenco dancers.

And Maury ("Steam Train") Graham convinced the 79th Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, that he needed to retain his title as King of the Hobos in order to continue visiting prisoners around the nation.

So it goes in America, this time-out August 1979.

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