Of Turkey and Jammin and Community

It was what we lived for: Christmas, summer break, and the Ham and Turkey Festival.

That’s right. Think Cuero’s Turkey Fest but add… BACON. You can see why it’s up there with Jesus’ birth.

This is the annual festival in my hometown, California, Mo. – population 4,000, not counting the cattle. Each September, blocks of our decrepit and abandoned downtown transforms into a raging metropolis by Mid-Missouri standards – with live music, a barbecue contest, vendors, food, games, booze and everyone you hadn’t seen since the day before. I’m pretty sure each one of those 4,000, and even some of the livestock, make it out to the festival each year.

The Ham and Turkey Festival is the epitome of Leave It To Beaver-esque childhood memories. I remember each year arriving early and eating a biscuit and gravy breakfast with my mom and pops. Since this was before every toddler had a bejeweled iPhone, I’d stake out friends who’d escaped their parents, ask daddy for 20 bucks, and peace out for the rest of the day.

Looking back, it was a rather beautiful luxury to be able to live in a place where stranger danger wasn’t an issue. The day was ours – we wannabe teenagers SANS ADULTS! – to check out concerts, buy unnecessary junk (sand art? really?), clobber cotton candy, or most likely, flirt with the group of boys trying to act hard without their parents around either.

It was a day so magical, it often even ended with those coveted words, “Yes, Dana can stay the night.”

I thought about the Ham and Turkey Festival at Victoria’s Jam Fest last night. For as much as I proclaim to be a city girl, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be part of a community so interwoven, it practically knows each other’s bowel movements.

While people swirled around Dianna, Swaggie and me at DeLeon Plaza, I felt at home. I hugged the family who often has opened up their home and liquor cabinets to me; I exchanged jests with the college president; I chatted with the couple that’s become my buddies at the monthly reading series.

I felt like I belonged, and I felt honored. This isn’t like that drunk uncle you have to invite to the reunion because, dammit, he’s family. California is my hometown. It’s a place that accepted me and molded me and loved me, if only because it had to. I’m its spawn.

But Victoria has no such blood ties. It didn’t have to adopt the orphan from one of those Yank states. Yet people have been so generous as to invite me into their lives, to encourage me, to get to know me, to even associate with the blasted media.

My job has afforded me the opportunity to interact with the movers and shakers, the down and out, and every other spectrum of clichés here in Victoria.  And I had fun jamming a bit with them – with my temporary town – on Saturday.

I don’t know if I’ve ever appreciated the sense of community I experienced during my childhood, but now that it’s been so long – and now that my parents aren’t just down the street at the barbecue contest – I feel lucky.

I’ll miss this place. That’s all.

The Chronicles of Nonsense

This is the chronicles of nonsense. The adventures of fuckleberry finn. Kayla Bell’s series of unfortunate events. 

My experience at the unhappiest place on earth — the Texas DMV.

After trying to buy some booze and discovering my Missouri ID was two weeks expired, I would soon understand why Mexican immigrants choose to endure scorching deserts, dangerous rivers and shady coyotes to come to this state.

Doing it legally is so much harder.

I went to the DMV the day after realizing I had been riding dirty. Well, as dirty as I get. It was a Friday afternoon, so I had already prepared myself for hell, but I didn’t anticipate leaving in tears. I had every document that proved my existence and legitimacy: birth certificate, social security card, passport, expired Missouri IDs, proof of insurance, car title, proof of registration. I had even reapplied makeup so I could for once take a good driver’s license picture. I got this.

An hour later, I would find out that because I no longer had a valid out-of-state license and was under the age of 25, I’d have to retake the written driving exam, the actual driving exam and… dear god… enroll in a 6-hour driving course.

I briefly considered moving back to Missouri to become a housewife, but resolved to call the driver education center to see how I could take care of this They said I could come in the next day, pay them a hefty $100 and be on my way. The next day was a Saturday. The only Saturday I’d had off in months. I cried on the phone, and the nice man said they would work out a payment plan with me if I couldn’t afford it by the next day.

“It’s not about money, it’s about principle,” I told him.

I tried to blame everyone, including the Swagg, for the hoops I had to jump through now that I had let my license expire.

But now that the ordeal is over, I can admit it was my fault. Well, 10 percent my fault, 90 percent Texas being completely unreasonable.

That Saturday, I drove to my driver education course. Catch that? I drove. My classmates were like, girrrrrl you’re crazy. I’m like, I forgot I’m illegal. Truly. This is nonsense. I do not belong here.

On our first break, a large black woman revealed she was “in” because she tasered a cop. I abandoned my phone conversation to ask her how the hell she managed that.

“Like this,” she shot back, pulling the trigger and shoving a taser gun near my face.

“Get me out of here,” I said when I got back on the phone.

By the next break, the class was chummy, comparing the weed in their pockets and setting up Facebook friendships and drug hook-ups for after class.

At one point, a girl polled the classroom. “Who all here graduated high school?”

Answers varied from, “I’m on my fifth year,” to, “I’m working on my GED.”

I kept quiet. When asked how I got answers for simple addition/subtraction stopping distance equations, I lied and said, “got lucky?”

On another break, a girl with a kid was complaining about her rent. “I pay $76 a month!” she said, appalled.

“Girl, I pay $18 cause I got TWO kids,” the taser-friendly chick said.

“Get me out of here,” I texted.

All this is not taking into account our 86-year-old teacher, who was a sweetheart and meant well… but if I had to teach these classes every week, I’d turn into a dumbass, too.

“WHY, whyyyy, in this day and age, must we have alcohol at gatherings,” he asked the class, which was completely irrelevant to the driving course.

“Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding, so it’s not a current phenomenon,” I was surprised I let slip out of my mouth.

“But WHYYYY,” the guy who said he’d never had a sip of alcohol persisted.

“I don’t know. Take it up with Jesus.”

I was being an asshole to the nice man, which I truly feel bad about now. But I was SO annoyed and really just wanted to take that damn written exam and leave.

At the end of the day, I got 100 percent on my written and road sign tests. I chucked up the deuces to the people who failed their exams and DROVE my ass home.

I got up early Monday morning to get in line at the DMV, turn in my paperwork and schedule an appointment to take my driving exam. Not only could I not schedule my exam until the next week when my family was coming to town, but they made me take my license picture that day. I had JUST woken up and either just showered or hadn’t showered in a few days… either way, I looked disgusting. So, for seven years, I will be identified WITHOUT makeup on. The girl who applied makeup minutes after leaving the womb, DID NOT WEAR MAKEUP the day of her ID picture. Somehow that’s Texas’s fault, too.

A week later, after my dear friend Jenny drove me TWO more times to the DMV, I was finally able to take the driving exam. I had broken out in hives, terrified, because it was the moment of truth. If all of this — the tears, the tasing, the anxiety — was in vain, I was resigned to just have two kids, pay $18-a-month rent and walk it.

The mammoth of a driving examiner squeezed herself into my car, her knees pointed outward because the 6-foot beast could barely fit. She said in a deep voice, “Let’s go,” and if I were 16 again, I would have unbuckled my seatbelt and ran away in tears.

During the horrifying drive, I twice got scolded for driving too slow (25?!?) in a 30-mph zone. I got marked down for that, but walked away with a 94 percent on my exam.

Bitches.

I peaced out with a paper ID that’s supposed to last me until they mail me my real ID in a few weeks.

And… can you believe it? Bars don’t accept that paper as legitimate identification.

TEXASSSSSSSS!!!!