We stood by the doorway and visited, whilst volunteers and merchants moved tables out of the ballroom. A room lined with wooden chairs all raised a step above the wooden floor. A large wooden throne centered on each of the four walls, each topped with the mount of a large, native cervid. (Oh, and hey Jules, I peeked at their cervid harvest from the Green State. Looks as though it went well...)

It'd been years since we'd been in this room. Last time was for the award ceremony for four young men in our youth group. Folks and sister of one of those young men were here in the ballroom, along with almost a hundred other people. (Including at least a dozen in little black cocktail dresses. Yes, it was a classy night.) They say he's doing well at Notre Dame...

The vendors were still packing up their wares. The folks from River Town with their dozens of varieties of fruit wines. We tried both kinds of chokecherry wine, as well as the plum, peach, cherry and apricot. We were surprised you can actually make something edible with Nanking cherries. The wife says the robins may not get many next year. The one gal was surprised I knew what a bulberry was (Shepherdia spp.), or that I knew what one tastes like.

We didn't bother to try their pumpkin wine. The male half of our double date offered us scents of his glass, and we agreed it smelled just like all their other wines.

Exactly like Everclear.

Don't know if these folks thought that was what wine is supposed to taste like. Or if their wares got frozen and ruined on the drive down. Or if they just cut their products with large amounts of alcohol. But if they'd been offering those wines for $5 a bottle, I would have declined. Even at $1 a bottle.

Well, maybe not for $1 a bottle. Like our friend said, it'd probably be really good for taking paint off your car...

The winners in our assessment?

For the wines, we had to go with the Zinfandels. The wife with her usual Glen Ellen white, and me with my newly discovered Gallo. When it came time to fill a glass and mingle and munch on cheese and crackers while waiting for the drawings and door prizes, that's what we had.

Top sparkling wine on both our lists was Cristalino, from Spain. Better than Champagne.

Honorable mentions were the old reliable Cold Duck, and the new Red Diamond.

We were too late to sample the Chocolate beer, but settled on Samuel Adams' Winter Lager as being the best on the tables.

Speaking of door prizes... the wife won the blue Ben Wa balls with white elephants (from the Zinfandel table, no less). The female half of our double date had recently received a similar pair from some of her employees.

Naturally we couldn't wait to explain to her which muscles these exercise balls are designed to exercise.

So aaaanyway, we were standing by the doorway when the DJ began the first dance song of the night. As the wife and I joined the crowd and began to dance, she gets this surprised look on her face.

"How do you know this song?"

Geez. Why wouldn't I know this song?

"I didn't know you listened to Kid Rock."

Who?

Turns out the wife, who listens to pop radio all day long, thought, like half the North American population, thought Kid Rock wrote that song.

He didn't. Whoever Kid Rock is.

The song is "Sweet Home Alabama". And for those of you who don't know, it's from Lynyrd Skynyrd.

In 1974.

And for the next three hours, we danced.

When you can watch a young brunette in a little black cocktail dress, wearing spike-heeled black boots, dancing with her beau while wearing his black cowboy hat, well, it's a good night.

And when you can watch the bank president strutting out onto the dance floor in his wife's high heels, well, it's a good night.