Kent Family Magic Circus Daily Blog: PORK

The O’Fallon, MO Heritage Festival is always a two day affair; July 3 and 4, regardless of the day of the week. This year it was a Thursday and Friday and that left us with the weekend free to take a short break. (Other events that wanted us for this weekend back when we were marketing this weekend wanted Saturday and Sunday with Friday, but our commitment to the festival didn’t let that happen. But that is OK because after the long drives from Canada and the four long shows yesterday (Friday) a couple of days off are nice. And doing them in St Louis is a great place to do it.

First, my Friday report. As I said we did 4 shows with ever increasing audience sizes as the day progressed because the night would climax with fireworks. O’Fallon does fireworks on both nights. By the time our 7:30 pm show came we had well over 800 people watching the show. Grant it many were manning their spots to watch the fireworks, but they nonetheless watched and enthusiastically enjoyed the show. We ad record crowds for our strange thing side show tent as well. The new two bodied-one headed pig has been a hit.

Amelia performed her fire-hoop for the first time this year, this time without a fire-protection suit. Victor rode his Unicycle across the tight wire; he nailed it on Thursday but came off near the end of the wire (caught by one of the big boy catchers, I think it was Kyle) in the Friday show. But the audience appreciated he effort. Amelia also performed her aerial silk praise and worship routine for which we got quite a few comments from Christians thanking us for our bravery to present a Christian program in the face of an ever growing hostile society to Christians. My introduction informed the audience it would be a praise program, and that we once considered secularizing the program (it was originally designed as a praise routine for a church in Atlanta) but I decided not to change it and keep the focus on God because I could, and would regardless if someone was offended by it. If anyone was offended they didn’t show it.

In each of the show I decided to keep a running joke that our 6’7” sound man, Kyle, was single and looking for a wife so if someone was interested to please apply after the show. Turned Kyle red a couple of times.

The event had one food vendor who sold frogs legs but the line was always so long and our show times so close together that we never got to try them. Darn.

I want to say sorry for the typos in the last post. I did that post at 4am and really didn’t care to proof read it. Both my parents scolded me. So I will try to proof read this before posting.

We slept at the park, actually a baseball field in O’Fallon Friday night. Our venue has a quirk. We performed on a baseball field. Our trailers and Rv and van weren’t allowed on the grass. So they peeled open a section of the outfield fence and I had to back the RV (and trailers) onto the warning track to avoid breaking sprinkler heads or harming the grass. Tricky. We all slept late this morning and then took off to the rv park where we would respite. It was a grueling 8 minute drive.

Once settled in at the RV Park I got a Facebook message from one of the Wallenda Family, from the Flying Wallenda’s. She asked if we were staying at the afore mentioned rv park. Well, it turns out so are they. Her dad, Tino, was to make a sky walk tonight at a fair nearby. We messaged back and forth and are hoping we can all get together tomorrow sometime. It will be good to see them again.

Dinner was at Pappy’s. It’s a pulled pork joint in St Louis that was made famous by Man VS Food 6 years ago. We had visited it just about six months after it opened back then and discovered it was the only pulled pork I have ever had that needed no sauce. Back then it was a relatively small place and the line was average for a restaurant. Today! Wow! The line during the slow part of the day was 45 minutes long and that doesn’t count for waiting for your food after ordering. So I used my smart phone, looked up their menu, and called in my order while in queue. 30 minutes later we were getting our food not needing to stand in line. While waiting a large man in a black chef jacket came out and said howdy. He and I chatted and we discovered he was the owner, or at least one of the three. Got some pictures. I did a magic trick for him and that is how I found out the SAM and IBM magic clubs were having their national convention in town and there were magicians in the shop at that very moment. He took me over to meet them. How did I miss that a huge convention like that was going to be close by?

Dinner knocked everyone’s socks off. The food at Pappy’s is fantastic. I am suffering a food coma as I type this. It is a once every six year treat. (Paid for by the record number of people visiting our side show tent yesterday.)

On a side note while we were here doing our show on Thursday SL Cardinals were back in my home state beating the SF Giants. I mentioned that to the crowd and they went wild. Big loyal fan base out here.