SocorroFest, pies, and the national anthem

Don’t look now, but we’re entering that season when multiple activities and events are going on the same day, when you want to be in two places at the same time. September and October ... that period when you have to plan your weekends down to the hour, practically.

Take this weekend. Barring any ladders or rickety scaffolds to not go under on Friday the 13th, join everybody at the Plaza tomorrow evening to party down on the food and entertainment and dancing at Socorrofest. It’s the first day of the two-day blowout put on annually by the city and Tech’s Performing Arts Series. Again this year, there are three stages both Friday and all day Saturday, from the Cap to the gazebo to Box Canyon Brewing, with a nice variety of musical genres. Just simple, small-town fun.

OK, that’s cool, but also on Saturday, hordes of pie-loving folks will converge on Pie Town for the 42nd Annual Pie Festival. There is always pie in abundance at the Pie Festival, but so are the gosh-darn fun horned toad races, horseshoe pitching, pie-eating contests, and music. Just simple, down-home fun.

Whichever you choose- and here’s the thing - both exemplify the concept that the simplest things can be the funnest (is funnest a word?). A “getting back to basics” kind of thing.

Further, the simpler you keep things, the less chance you’ll have of getting yourself in trouble.

Having said that, I’ll be the first to concede that keeping up with the times - the apps, the gizmos, the products - is sorta’ kinda’ fun, but just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s better. But time marches on, and every day it seems like someone is trying to invent the proverbial better mousetrap.

For instance, I clicked on an ad for a horse shampoo that can also be used for humans. I don’t know if that’s a great innovation or not, depending, I guess, on how many people want to “horse around” in the shower, but it does remind me of the horse liniment from Southwest Feed I tried on my sore legs once.

My first mistake was thinking it would be more effective if I applied it right after a hot shower. My second mistake was not wearing rubber gloves. Long story short, it took only a couple minutes before my legs were burning like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and my hands felt like I’d been peeling green chiles nonstop for a week.

In truth, we’re all just looking for stuff that works … just don’t believe everything you see online.

While we’re on the subject, I’ve been reading some of the click-bait articles on eating right and never eating or doing anything unhealthy. You can’t get away from it ... people telling us how to get healthy and stay healthy and live to a ripe old age. But how can you know when you are ripe?

It’s not only current “correct” food that’s hawked, but also all those herbal capsules and alternative medical cures.

This kind of marketing all goes way back to when little bottles of heroin were advertised in newspapers as a headache cure. And then along came the guy who had an epiphany one day to start mixing cocaine into his carbonated soft drink. “Feel better fast” used to be the slogan for Bayer aspirin, but it could have been used by that first-ever Coke. It was advertised as an intellectual beverage and temperance drink that is “a valuable brain tonic and a cure for all nervous afflictions – headache, neuralgia, hysteria, melancholy, etc.”

Oh, and a cocaine habit, maybe?

Besides the kickoff of SocorroFest, tomorrow is the 210th anniversary of what I think of as America’s theme song. On Sept. 13, 1814, a lawyer named Francis Scott Key was on a ship outside Baltimore witnessing a British attack on Fort McHenry. He was so horrified at the use of those new-fangled British rockets bombarding the fort all night long that he figured that it would be totally destroyed. But it wasn’t, and when the sun came up, he was so inspired by the sight of McHenry’s huge American flag still flying he sat down and started rendering his thoughts in poem form. This stirring poem, as you know, was later added to the tune of a popular drinking song so Jimi Hendrix could play it at Woodstock. Well…sorta’ kinda’.

Before I forget it, next Tuesday is Citizenship Day, established in 1940 to commemorate the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. In 1952, it was officially changed to Constitution Day, but it is known by both names. Whatever you want to call it, remember the words of Benjamin Franklin: “All the Constitution guarantees is the pursuit of happiness. You have to catch up with it yourself.”

And it seems I’m always playing catch-up.