Sweater Project

So, this weekend…

Several years ago, a woman named Jill Conner Browne wrote a book called The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love. I haven’t read it myself, but I can tell you that it has left its mark in the small town of Hunt, TX.

On Saturday evening, we all got dressed. Dan (my stepdad) put on his slacks and a golf shirt and packed up his trombone. I put on my kilt and a Scottish shirt with lace cuffs and a bunch of lace at the throat. Mom - well, mom spent about half an hour tearing all over the house trying to find her bra. She’s got a bra that’s about four sizes too big for her that is part of her Sweet Potato Queen outfit. She never did find it, so she just stuffed one of the ones she had on hand and then got into a green sequined dress, a huge red wig, black cowboy hat, white satin gloves, garish rings, fishnet stockings and leather calf boots. They gave me an Irish drum that they’d picked up on a trip to the Emerald Isle and we drove into town.

In front of Elaine’s Table, a very nice restaurant in what passes for downtown Hunt, we met with the other Queens. Thirty women between the ages of 60 and 80 were milling about with their husbands. The husbands wore Spud Stud shirts and the women wore big red wigs, black cowboy hats, green sequined dresses - it was impossible to tell them apart. There was a float and a vehicle which I can only describe as a contraption, both of which were on hand for the Queens to ride on as they did their circuit of downtown. Dan and I and another fellow with a kilt and bagpipes began marching along the route playing Scotland the Brave. We made sure to keep several paces of the contraption, as it was groaning loudly and leaking gasoline. We were also pretty sure it had no brakes, so we stayed out of its way on the downhill sections.

As we played and the Queens rode, they waved merrily from their perches. As there was no crowd, most of the waves were observed only by roadside fences and a few wild squirrels. But they waved proudly and regally until we arrived at the Hunt Store. Once there, we all piled in and the Queens danced to a few selected tunes from a boom box.

I turned to Dan at one point and mentioned that I thought we were surrounded by a bunch of fucking insane people. He grinned and said, “Oh yeah! And we volunteered for this.”

It was a good time. I look forward to doing it again next year.

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