Shut the Front Door Productions, a local theater group, put on a production of 1940s Radio Hour at the Chelsea Depot. The shows started at 8pm.
What? You don’t believe me?
See?!
1940s Radio Hour is a play about a live radio show in New York City. Because the fictional show is a musical variety show, the play is full of classic 1940s songs.
I had a great senior portrait session with Andy. We spent the first part of the session on a beautiful farm a few miles west of Chelsea.
After a while we headed into town.
That’s the historic Chelsea depot behind Andy. It’s a wonderful old depot that’s been well-preserved and is now host to a wide variety of local events.
The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum came to the Chelsea library to teach local kids about the Great Lakes. Specifically, they gave the kids a hands-on illustration of how water flows through the Great Lakes to the ocean.
Hey, look! Up in the corner! It’s Canada! Good thing there’s a Great Lake or two in the way.
The lakes were represented by aluminum pans of varying sizes, and they were resting on foam blocks of varying sizes to provide the varying elevations of the lakes. (Varying varying varying varying. Varying varying? Varying!)
Once the lakes were arranged at the proper elevations and locations, they punched holes in the sides of the pans and used straws to connect the lakes. (They used modeling clay to seal the holes.)
When the lakes were connected, the water joined the party.
The model worked very well.
The above photo shows Lakes Superior (top straw) and Michigan (left straw) draining into Lake Huron, while the below photo shows Lake Huron draining into Lake Erie.
If you’re wondering where the next straw is…well, there isn’t one. Why? Because Lake Erie drains into Lake Ontario by way of Niagara Falls! You can’t see it in this photo because Lake Erie isn’t yet full, but the water drained over the top right corner of the pan into Lake Ontario.
Here’s a look at the entire model:
The whole model was a simple but remarkably effective way to help kids — and adults, too! — get a good understanding of how the Great Lakes work. Even better, it’s something you can very easily do at home with your kids. Just get a few aluminum pans, straws, and modeling clay and you’re good to go.
On Saturday — the last day of the fair — I finally got a chance just to walk around the fair. It was a beautiful day.
As I was walking around, I saw Colors the Clown doing a show for the kids.
Chelsea has changed quite a bit since I was a kid (back in the 20th century?!), but it’s still a rural small town surrounded by farms, so the fair still has a significant focus on farming. Since a farm can be a foreign concept to many kids, it’s valuable to have that focus. Food exists before it’s in the grocery store, and it’s good to get a reminder of that fact every now and again.
Here we have future bacon lounging in one of the barns:
I realize that could also be future ham, but I like bacon more than I like ham.
The next barn had goats.
You might think that’s a conceited animal to go around calling itself Greatest Of All Time, but here’s an important detail: the animals were around long before a conceited professional athlete ruined the name.
That barn also had sheep.
That particular sheep was remarkably sociable. Or maybe it was hungry. Or maybe it was stealing watches and wallets. Would that make it a pickBAAAAAcket?
Speaking of sheep: another barn had sheep shearing demonstrations. I don’t mean there were people protesting the practice of sheep shearing — though I’m sure there are malcontents who would do just that — but rather there was a farmer shearing sheep where people could watch.
That gentleman has been shearing sheep for decades. The process proved to be very efficient, and when he was done he let the kids come up to feel the newly-shorn sheep.
While the kids were admiring the sheep’s new haircut, he explained that the greasy substance they felt on the sheep was lanolin. Or, in the native language of sheep, LAAAAAAAnolin.
If you’d like to see what sheep shearing looks like, here’s a short video:
One of the other great traditions of the Chelsea Fair is the fair parade. It seems to be longer than it was when I was a kid, but that just means it involves even more candy, so kids (and dentists) still enjoy it.
The parade marshal was the very cheerful owner of a local barbershop:
I’m pretty sure Gary doesn’t wear the old-timey barber gear on a normal workday, but his barbershop is wonderfully small-town and old-school.
As usual, the CHS marching band wasn’t playing when it marched past me:
A local church put its worship band on a wagon and entertained the crowd along Main Street:
The Lions — not the Detroit Lions — brought their disease-fighting air force:
The Beach Middle School band actually did play while they walked past me!
The fair parade is a happy time for everybody. Don’t believe me? Take a look:
If that’s not happy, I don’t know what happy is.
The 2011 Fair Queen was in attendance:
The CHS cheerleaders cheered for the crowd:
The Chelsea House Orchestra got out of the house and turned into the Chelsea Parade Orchestra for the afternoon:
Eventually, everybody’s favorite fair parade feature rolled by: the Jiffy Mixes truck!
The Jiffy truck is accompanied by friendly locals handing out free (FREE!) boxes of Jiffy Mixes:
Back when I was growing up, there was nobody handing out boxes. Instead, the truck driver threw them out his window. The newer method means a lot more people get boxes, but…well, I do miss the old method just a little bit.
The Jiffy Mixes folks did introduce something — or rather, someone — new this year:
That’s Corny, the new Jiffy Mixes mascot. The character was created when the company produced a new video to accompany its factory tour, and it proved popular enough to prompt a real-life Corny costume.
Finally, scattered throughout the fair parade are a bunch of demolition derby cars. The winners — not just the overall winners, but also the individual heat winners — get to ride in the parade with their thoroughly trashed but still victorious cars.
Remember the library-sponsored derby car?
Yes, that’s driver Kim Potocki on the library car. She drove the extraordinarily well-read car to a heat victory on Wednesday.
A relatively recent fixture of fair week in Chelsea is the Run for the Rolls. What’s the Run for the Rolls, you ask? It’s a set of two races — a 5k and a 1 mile — that take place Saturday morning of fair week. The 5k takes place in the fairgrounds earlier in the morning, and the 1 mile heads down Main Street immediately before the fair parade begins. Since the latter runs the parade route immediately before the very popular parade, it includes lots of spectators to cheer on the runners.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why it’s called the Run for the Rolls — after all, don’t people usually run to avoid getting rolls? — it got its name thanks to the Common Grill and its inconceivably delicious dinner rolls. If you haven’t had a Common Grill roll, you don’t know what rolls are. They’re all-caps GOOD.
I wasn’t able to photograph the earlier race at the fairgrounds, but since I was set up to shoot the parade, I was all set to shoot the 1 mile run down Main Street. Before the race started I was certain I knew who would be running in first place, and I was right.
Before you get too impressed at my prognostication skills, let me explain: Bryce, the runner shown above, finished second in the state as a junior in the 2010 cross country finals. It wasn’t hard to guess that he’d be leading a 1-mile run through Chelsea.
The race has become quite popular:
Because it’s a short race in a fun environment, it attracts lots of kids and families.
Wednesday night was the second night of the demolition derby. It also happened to be a day of spectacular weather. When I arrived to stake out my spot, there were beautiful storm clouds just past the fairgrounds.
Unfortunately for all of us spectators waiting for the derby to start, those weren’t the last storm clouds in the sky. Not long after I took that photo, the sky got angrier than Brian Kelly after another Notre Dame turnover. The result was a downpour accompanied by uncomfortably close lightning strikes and deafening thunder.
After taking shelter and enduring the storm, we were treated to more gorgeous clouds.
After a delay to let the storm pass, the derby started. It was a little muddier than usual thanks to the deluge, but it was still plenty of fun.
After a couple heats, yet another intense storm began to move into the area. For a while we were just past the edge of the storm, and the frequent flashes of lightning provided a spectacular backdrop for the derby. The following is one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken, and it came courtesy of the fisheye lens I’d bought just a few days earlier.
A few minutes after I took that photo, the lightning strikes again became uncomfortably close, so I decided it was time to head to my car. This turned out to be wise: just as I reached my car, the heavens opened up yet again. I sat in my car for about fifteen minutes listening to the rain pelt my car and watching the lightning flash directly overhead with astounding frequency. To put my time to good use, I shot more photos through my windshield with my fisheye lens. These weren’t nearly as good as the above photo, but they’re still worth posting.
Sometimes the lightning was behind the clouds, making for eerie photos…
…and sometimes it was front and center.
When the rain let up a little bit, I headed home. But while the rain stopped by the time I got home, the divine fireworks were still going strong. When I arrived home, the lightning was over the field behind my house, so I spent a few more minutes getting photos of the remarkable storm. This was the best of the bunch:
Neither one of those light sources is the moon. Was it a ridiculous display of lightning? Yeah, it was ridiculous.
The Chelsea Fair doesn’t ease into the excitement: the first night of the fair features one of three nights of the fantastic demolition derby. I’ve been going to the demolition derby at the Chelsea Fair for as long as I can remember, and I wouldn’t think of missing it. Watching cars smash into each other until only one can move? I’M THERE. It’s like my life, but on purpose.
To keep speeds at a vaguely reasonable level, this classic old Dodge fire truck wets down the arena before the first heat.
As this is a sporting event in the United States of America, it’s prefaced by the national anthem. This respectful gentleman is one of the referees. When he’s not standing with his hat over his heart, he’s responsible for (among other things) enforcing the rules of the derby, keeping track of which cars have been disqualified and stopping the action when there’s a problem (usually either a fire or a dangerous part of a car lying loose in the arena).
This gentleman wanted the crowd to get excited.
The crowd obeyed.
Remember when the library had kids paint the car it was sponsoring? This was the final product.
Remember: reading can take you anywhere, kids — even into a demolition derby. That’s especially useful because you can’t actually drive in a demolition derby until you’re an adult. Sorry. We adults have to save some of the fun for ourselves, you know.
If you want pretty cars, a demolition derby is not the place for you.
This kind of fire is acceptable and, in fact, very common:
Last year one car had flames shooting out its exhaust pipes the entire time, and just a couple minutes into the heat the pipes were so hot they were glowing red. It was wonderful.
It’s also very common for radiators to break on impact:
As seen above, it’s often spectacular. It’s usually accompanied by a hilarious “FOOM!” sound that draws everybody’s attention.
See? It’s spectacular!
Some of the cars feature creative paint jobs:
You have to enjoy them before the heat starts, though, because the paint jobs inevitably get covered in layers of mud and destruction.
Yes, the red car was still moving at this point. You might be surprised at how much a car can be destroyed and yet still move. You can thank your local automotive engineer for that.
Not all radiator problems involve the “FOOM!” and the cloud of steam. Sometimes a pipe gets knocked off and starts spraying steam:
That would probably be a lot more amazing if it actually helped propel the car, but it doesn’t. It just looks cool. It might help take the wrinkles out of your clothes, too, if you could get your clothes near it. But if you think it’s a good idea to take your clean clothes into the middle of a demolition derby just to get rid of the wrinkles, you have far greater problems than wrinkles.
Here’s where that red car stopped moving:
Why did it stop? Well, take a look at the smoke pouring from its front tire. The tire let loose from the wheel, so the wheel was just spinning freely inside the tire. It’s like one of those silly spinner rims, but it’s at least 50% more functional.
It was a beautiful evening for the demolition derby:
Yes, I know you’re sad you weren’t able to be there. Maybe you shouldn’t let than happen next year, eh?
Hey, here’s a question: what happens when you get old and grow facial hair?
You get a white baird! Okay, okay. Sorry. That was terrible.
Seriously, though, occasionally there’s a fire that requires the firefighters’ attention. When that happens the car is disqualified and the driver exits to sympathetic applause. For some reason in this case the car was cleared to continue, but a few minutes later it required more attention from the firefighters:
At that point they deemed the car unfit to continue and the driver made a hasty exit.
What’s that? You’re disappointed to see the derby photos end? Why, you’re in luck: those aren’t the last derby photos! I spent the next evening at the derby as well, so there’s another set to come. Stay tuned.
The long-running much-beloved hyphenatedly-described Chelsea Community Fair is the officially unofficially official end of summer in Chelsea. It always opens during the day on Tuesday, but it doesn’t truly open until early evening, when the kids parade arrives at the fairgrounds after winding its way through the side streets of Chelsea.
The parade is led by the previous year’s fair queen.
Trailing the previous year’s queen and this year’s candidates is the middle school band.
After the band came the flood of kids. Seriously, it was a flood of kids. There were a lot of kids in the parade.
I can’t tell if he was happy to see me and waving to the camera or if he was saying “Oh, go fly a kite” and waving me away. I’m pretty sure it was the former, but…well, kids these days, right? Get off my lawn and all. (For the record: he was happily waving.)
They should make an adult version of that bike. We old folks like fun things, too!
The stream of kids seemed practically endless. That was partly because there were a lot of kids in the parade and mostly because there were even more mosquitoes out for dinner than there were kids in the parade.
I’ve long felt Barbie made it difficult for the average child to relate to her, what with her Cadillac SUV and her big dream house and whatnot. Shouldn’t there be a Studio Apartment Barbie who lives in an okay-but-not-luxurious apartment building and drives a 1998 Ford Escort with 190,000 miles on it? The whole world isn’t pink and rich, Barbie.
That child’s identity has been hidden to protect the innocent. Wait, what? You’re not buying that? Okay, fine. I didn’t notice until later that I’d timed the shot all wrong and obscured his face. But I’m including this photo to remind you that Cloudy With A Chance For Meatballs is one of the greatest kids books ever written, and that you should never ever mention the atrocity that was that awful movie by the same title. I prefer to believe the movie never existed. The book is fantastic, people. Stick with the book. Do it for the children. (Because, you know, it’s a kids book.)
When the parade arrived at the fairgrounds, there were more activities for the kids. One such activity was the trike pull.
This was just a fun not-for-competitive-profit activity, but the fair does have a competitive trike pull. I didn’t photograph it this year, so you’ll just have to show up to next year’s fair to watch it.
Stay tuned for more fair photos!
If you’re at all familiar with the Chelsea Community Fair, you know two things:
1: It’s the single best event in Chelsea, and
2: It features a demolition derby, which is the single best event of the single best event in Chelsea.
If you’re not familiar with the concept of a demolition derby…I’m sorry. You’ve been deprived, and your life won’t be complete until you’re familiar with the wondrous fantasticality that is the demolition derby.
Just imagine a bunch of people bringing a bunch of old cars and gleefully smashing into each others’ cars until there’s only one vaguely functional car left. Got it? Good — now you know what a demolition derby is. It’s like rush hour on your favorite highway, except road rage isn’t a big deal. Why? Because instead of being penalized if you do run into somebody else, you get penalized if you don’t run into somebody else. It’s crazy, it’s loud, and it’s hilariously fun to watch.
If you’re a sophisticated big city fancy-pants you might think the notion of a demolition derby is ridiculous, but that’s okay: if you’re a sophisticated big city fancy-pants, I probably think you’re ridiculous. If you can’t enjoy the awesomeness of grown-up bumper cars, then you don’t know how to have fun.
Anyway: derby cars are sponsored by a wide variety of local businesses and organizations. (The most appropriate sponsors are chiropractors and auto parts stores.) This year the Chelsea Library decided to sponsor a car, maybe in an effort to get kids to collide with reading or something. Even better, the library decided to park the car on its front lawn and invite local kids to paint the car.
The library supplied the paint and the brushes. All the kids had to do was show up and have fun.
As you can see, they had plenty of fun.
The great thing about a derby car is that it doesn’t need to look pretty. Wait, let me rephrase: it really shouldn’t look pretty, because it’s just going to get destroyed in the derby. That’s what makes it such a great art project for kids.
The car’s driver, local resident and demolition derby veteran Kim Potocki, was on hand to watch the kids’ progress.
Well, at that moment she was looking at the camera. But the rest of the time she was watching the kids paint the car.
I think the car was a lawn ornament every bit as dignified as the library itself.
Don’t you agree?
One wise parent brought an apron.
The rest of the kids just made a mess without aprons.
The interior of a derby car is…well, let’s just say it’s not built for comfort. Instead, it’s built for not dying.
You can’t see it in that photo, but the gas tank is sitting where the back seat used to be.
At the end of the allotted time, the car’s soon-to-be-rumpled exterior had few bare spots left.
Some kids got creative and splattered paint on the car…
…and some even signed their names or left their handprints. (Those handprints could be trouble if Horatio Caine gets his hands on the car.)
If you’d like to come check out the Chelsea demolition derby, it’ll happen at 7:30pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, August 23 and 24. The whole fair is a great event, so I’d recommend arriving early enough to walk around the rest of the fair.