Have you ever wondered why God created gnats? Now I know He would not create anything without a purpose but I have to question His decision on that. I wonder if Noah, bless His heart, carried some with him on the ark? Do you spose?
Anyway, there are only 2 purposes I can find for gnats. One of these is to teach us below the "gnat line" patience. It takes real patience to work outside with the gnats buzzing in your ears and up your nose. They also like my knees and eyes. Maybe they have a knee fetish, bless their hearts. They just seem to like to
swarm around and "bug" you while you are working. The more you sweat, they more the come. I think they holler out to all their friends and neighbors, here's a sweaty person, come on.
The other purpose is to provide us with exercise. You see, those of us down here in the South learn to swat the gnats, and blow them away with our mouths by pushing out your lower lip and huffing and puffing. This blows them away and the swatting the air with the hands gives our wrists a workout. The only problem is that we could develop large wrists and our lower lips will stick out permanently. Now I know we all need to exercise more, but there's no use in overworking 2 parts of our bodies, don't you know?
So my conclusion is that why God created gnats is still a mystery for we don't really need large wrists or lower lips that stick out. The swatting does make us look friendly to strangers who don't know what we are doing, but we tend to wave at everybody we meet anyway.
Now there is a little South Georgia town that has a "Gnat Day" celebration with arts and crafts, a gnat queen, a gnat run, and all the other activities that make up "A Day." They decided that since the little pests are numerous and all around us might as well make some money off of them. Not sure I would want the title of Gnat Queen but then some of our Southern Belles will be queen of anything to get to wear a crown and act queenly.
There are several other "Days" which make me wonder a little bit about the mentality of the town sponsoring them. Two of our Georgia towns have Rattlesnake Roundups and festivals. Now we went to one of these many years ago and I stayed as far away from those things as the fairgrounds would permit. I could just feel one of those things crawling on me and I just knew one would escape and hunt me down being as I am petrified of anything which crawls on the ground. They even have cooked rattlesnake for you to eat. I would just as soon gnaw off my foot and eat it as eat rattlesnake. Those festivals are not for me no matter how many arts and crafts they have for me to examine and figure out how to make myself.
Then there is the Grits festival. Now that is one for me for I do love my grits. You can feed me plain grits, cheese grits, cheese-garlic grits, shrimp grits, grits and gravy, grits and eggs or grits and butter. Just DON'T feed me grits with sugar and milk! This is a disgrace to a good, Southern food which will make your brain grow. At least that is what my mama told me and she was always right. At this festival, they even let you jump in a pool of grits and eat as much as you want and tote as much as you can carry home with you. Wow, a pool of grits. Wonder if they have butter to go with them?
Of course fruits and vegetables make wonderful festivals. We have the peach, watermelon and blueberry festivals down here where we live. These are always good for you get to sample the featured food. The watermelon festival in Cordele is a huge to-do and is a good one. Anytime you can eat watermelon it is a good day. It is nectar from heaven.
The animals don't get left out for there is a Mule Day and a Pig Jig. The Pig Jig is of course a barbecue festival and you can smell it for miles. You know how you can tell a good barbecue place from a bad one? If you can't smell the barbecue and wood smoke, it is out of a can. I have found this to be mostly true in my experience. If it is smokey, smells like barbecue and a little dim inside, the meat will be good. If it is smoke free, clean and smells like nothing, it is barbecue out of a can or frozen. No good, stay away and look for the smoke. Trust your nose every time.
So ya'll come on down here and visit one of our festivals for I've only named a few. You can celebrate most anything if you can celebrate a pest like a gnat. Also, I will give you free lessons on how to swat and blow gnats. It's easy even little children can do it.
Nuff said,
The Georgia Peach
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