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It's Sidewalk Sales today, the pinnacle of wonder that defines Fiesta Days for young and old.

And where am I? Out on the streets of McHenry, swilling quarter beers with friends old and new?

Packed into one of the many area bars (because Sidewalk Sales closes down at 4:00 CST), pressed up against my fellow moist McHenryians, pretending to be glad to see people from high school?

No. I am at here in my air conditioned house, waiting for Andy to get back from Borders with the Melissa Etheridge autobiography, watching Good Morning, Vietnam on the Superstation, and petting Baxter with my foot.

Because it's hot outside. Not just warm. Not just humid. It is, as Dennis would say, Africa Hot.

And I am big with baby.

And the combination is ugly.

Instead, we spent the day on Lauderdale Lakes, boating around with Andy's aunt and uncle and newlyweds Cinda and Henri. We docked in the middle of Green Lake and swam for a few hours, and I greatly enjoyed bobbing around on a Fladoodle or Canoodle or Black Poodle thing that cost $2.70 at Target, but was strong enough to keep me and Quinn afloat for as long as we pleased.

But as long as today's the day, I might as well tell a Sidewalk Sales story or two, seeing as how it's tradition and all.

For those of you too weary to check those links, I will recap the purpose of Sidewalk Sales here:

Sidewalk Sales is the pinnacle event in McHenry's two-week extravaganza of summer goodness--Fiesta Days. Allegedly, people leave their homes for Sidewalk Sales to shop all the bargains around town, but no one I know does that, not even my friend's moms. The reason most people in McHenry go out during Sidewalk Sales is for quarter beers.

On the last Saturday during Fiesta Days, Riverside Drive is closed for most of the day, and right there at the corner of Riverside Drive and Route 120, Foxhole Pizza sells plastic cups of beer for a quarter. Now, the surrounding area is ripe with bars, and there are plenty of deals going on all over town, what with everyone in an uproar over Fiesta Days and all. But most of the revelers cram themselves as close to the Foxhole and the quarter beer stand as they can get. In fact, the moment that you catch sight of the activity on the south end of Riverside Drive, your heart is sure to leap...from anticipation or horror, depending on how you feel about quarter beers and a lot of moist McHenryians.

So let's set the stage. It's 1991. My friends Sue and Kim had just graduated from college, and Midge and I were going to graduate that December.

Who is Midge, you may ask? Midge (real name: Colleen, but not the Colleen I'm still friends with) was one of my best friends in high school and college, but along about 1993, she went away...without explaining why to any of us. When she was here, she was a funny, goofy friend, always up for an adventure, always ready with a loopy comment that made everyone collapse in hysteria. Everyone in my family loved her. Her family's home was always open to us, no matter what time of day or night it was. I miss the old Midge still, after all these years. It hurts less that she left us, but sometimes it still makes me really sad.

It was a weird time between childhood and adulthood. We were looking for (or had already obtained) grown-up jobs for the fall, but we still felt like kids. We lived at home. We had the same no-brain summer jobs we'd had all through college. And for the first time during a summer at home, we were all 21 and could legally hang out in bars.

Danger! Danger kitty!

The four of us united under the name MASK (which led to many teacherly jokes as three of us were to become teachers...Sue and Kim were the Consonant Blend, I was the Vowel that held the group together, and Midge was the Initial Consonant), and we dubbed our mission the Summer of '91 Olympics. We elected an official bar, song, color, flower, philanthropy, battle cry, dance, beer, and shot. We had a manager, a beer boy and a Secret God. People would see us out and ask what event we were engaged in that evening. ("Well, looks like we're headed for the Javelin Throw tonight, based on the length of that cigarette Kim is smoking.") There's really nothing flattering I can say about any of us during that summer...but here's a nice picture!

Midge, Amy, Sue, Kim: The official MASK portrait in front of H.Q.

As Fiesta Days approached, our fervor grew. We faxed each other from our office jobs all week, counting down the days until the two-week party that would surely be the highlight of our summer.

Finally, finally, the first day of Fiesta Days arrived. The opening event was Food Fiesta, to be held all day and evening at Peterson Park. There would be dozens of food vendors, a beer tent, and many low-quality bands assembled to help us celebrate the fact that we live in McHenry, Illinois.

Here is a (kind of painful, now that I re-read it) excerpt from a story I wrote for Kim's birthday about our activities that opening day:

You know it's going to be a bad day when you're asking your mother to drop you and your friends off at the park. Hitching a ride is acceptable when you are twelve, but when you are over the age of twenty-one, you should generally be capable of fending for yourself.

This theory does not hold true during Fiesta Days.

'Twas July 13, 1991 and we stood poised at the brink of the holiday we had been yearning for since the winter months. The first Saturday of Fiesta Days, and MASK was ready to roll. At 1:30 p.m., ASK was assembled in Mary Ann's (Sue's mom) living room, hankering to pick up the Initial Consonant and scoot on over to the park. Food Fiesta started at two o'clock, and there would be hell to pay if someone important beat us there. With some verbal cues, Mary Ann realized the urgency of the situation and put herself behind the wheel. As we headed towards Riverside Drive to Midge's house, we were reassured to find the missing consonant walking over to meet us. Content that we were all equally impatient to begin celebrating the climax of the MASK Summer '91 Olympics, I would have to say that we thoroughly enjoyed the ride to Peterson Park.

There was a bit of an uproar when the rides were sighted, and I fear that Mary Ann wished us dead, if only for a few minutes. After bidding her a fond farewell, we approached the magical gates that would lead us to Food Fiesta, each of us clutching our dollar for admission firmly in our hands.

The time: 2:05 p.m.

The VietNOW veterans had only kind words for us as we pranced proudly through those gates as if we owned the joint. We contributed our dollar, accepted our souvenir Firsta Days cup, thanked them heartily, and immediately zeroed in on the ID booth.

Like a pack'a wild dogs we descended on that booth to obtain wristbands signalling to all who came near that we were 21, and WE COULD CONSUME. It was with a mixture of pride and eager anticipation that we strapped those neon pink bracelets on and strode purposefully towards the beer tent.

The beer tent.

Wasn't it lovely, fixated across the park, like a beacon in the night? We knew. We knew right where it would be, and we were all over it. Even though it was early, a small crowd had accumulated. It was with the utmost care that we decided $5 for 4 beer tickets was our deal. Carefully, delicately, gently, we put the first beer to our lips.

Aaaahhh...Fiesta Days!

Next on our agenda was some grub. We were feeling good, pockets full of tickets, sun on our faces, we could handle some dogs. A dollar'a dog, that's one of the reasons you love Fiesta Days. Add some chips and we were golden.

Before the dogs and chips were gone, the beer had run out. A couple of us went for more, a couple of us generally enjoyed the atmosphere. The beer ran out again. And again. Soon, we were well into buying tickets in rounds. We had accumulated a healthy stack of beer cups and were feeling a little proud--if not masculine--when the first of our Friends showed up.

(Our "Friends" were a group of guys who were a year older than us, whom none of us had ever talked to in high school because they were a little too cool for our act, but whom we had recently befriended and frequently sought to impress.)

Yes, they were cool arriving at 3:15 p.m.; they didn't look too anxious to be at Fiesta Days; they were fashionably late. But, we had to notice, they were duly admirative of our sizeable stack of cups. They knew who the go-getters were. They knew.

We rose to join Migs, Ace, Greg (who Sue would marry two summers later), Don, and the Lego Brothers, and watched as more and more familiar faces trickled in. Things were shaping up in McHenry, and Fiesta Days--"Where It's Never Too Hot To Wear Leather"--was off with a bang.

After doing a bonding thing with our Friends, we ventured off on our own to check out the crowd and see who we had to work with. Our journey led us to the T-shirt stand. The woman peddling the official T-shirts of Fiesta Days was not only a prosperous entrepreneur, but soon enough, a good friend. We all agreed that $12 per brightly colored shirt was a steal, and we promised to be back soon. I think deep down we all knew that we'd rather spend $12 on a couple'a more brewskis, but no one voiced that doubt aloud--it may have broken the spell of Fiesta Days.

OK, that's enough of that dusty relic. But that day was eventful--we went on a boat ride during which our driver (sober, honest) got pulled over by the boat police because all five of us were standing and one of us may have toasted the boat police with an open can of beer.

<Looking around, scratching head.>

We took Midge's nieces on the rides. When the park closed down, I took a nap on Midge's kitchen floor while she freshened up, then fell down her basement stairs while trying to get myself a Pepsi. We went to a graduation party for someone we went to grade school with (to this day I have no idea how we got ourselves involved in that scene). Then we retired to the Gambler to finish off the evening with the rest of the sunburned, drunken town.

And when the Gambler closed down at 2:00 a.m....well, that's when my final adventure began.

For some reason I left the bar on my own and walked the half-mile to Midge's house where her parents were in bed, asleep. I decided it was time for a snack, so I dialed up Domino's. After placing an order for two pizzas...because I wanted Midge to have a snack when she made it home, too...I plopped down on the kitchen floor to wait.

My next recollection is of a short, stocky woman in a Domino's uniform on her knees beside me, shaking me.

"Excuse me," she was saying. "Ma'am? I don't mean to wake you, but...your pizza is here!"

I got up (how, I have no idea...I'm not easy to wake up even when I haven't been drinking for twelve hours) and fixated on the steaming treats she had set on the counter. Oh, that pizza...that pizza was going to be mine. But the delivery woman...why was she looking at me?

"Um, that's going to be $10.80," she told me.

Oh man. I put my hands in my pockets, but only found my ID and shreds of my wristband from the park. There was no money anywhere on my person. I gazed again at the steaming pizzas, then saw a familiar object on the counter next to them.

A checkbook.

And a pen!

All right!

I carefully made the check out to Domino's, then looked up to see whose checkbook I was using. I signed Midge's name, ripped it out triumphantly, and handed it over to the delivery gal. Then I sat back down on the floor with one of the pizzas and a Miller Lite from the fridge.

"Thank you," she told me. "I'm, um, just going to lock this door behind me when I go. Have a good night."

Luckily for me, Midge worked at the bank and was able to get a copy of her check so she could mail it to me with cute little comments.

I'm thinking about Sue and Kim, who went to Sidewalk Sales today to celebrate MASK's ten-year anniversary (Ten years? Jeeeeesus.) I'm thinking about Midge, wondering if she'll show up there, as she has a few times in recent years.

And I'm thinking about that Domino's delivery woman, and I'm glad she didn't ask me for any identification that night.

Because that pizza, it was going to be mine. You don't mess with the Vowel.