Cow Chip Bingo

Life in rural America has it's joys, stresses and oddities. It's the oddities that are on my mind this morning. Festival season in Nebraska appears to start the first weekend in June. We had our choice of a nationally sponsored bbq cook off, a Rail & Trail themed event celebrating the area's railroad and pioneering history, a German festival and a tribute festival to a small town's founder. The weather was wonderful, breezy, dry and sunny. How to choose? Easy....how can you not choose the one that highlights cow chip bingo! I ....... you not. You fill in the blank.


Picture this; a large field with about 5 cows milling around, doing their cow thing. Silly humans actually spend money to buy a numbered flag. The flag is assigned a position on the bingo board and is placed in a corresponding position in the field. And then you wait. What are you waiting for? Well, the big plop of course! Really. And when it finally happens, the flag nearest the plop is the winner of a prize. How long you wait is of course totally up to the cows, who are known to be exceptionally contrary on occasion and the event can run as long as an hour. Chicken .... Bingo has been known to take up to 2 hours! In this case, it was a quick game with winners declared in under 10 minutes.


Now, I've been to a lot of festivals in my former life as a craft show vendor. I've been to CottonPickin' Days, Muleskinner Day's, Peanut Festivals,Peach Festivals,Old Mill Days, you name it, I've probably been to something like it. I thought I'd seen just about every kind of event a committee of well meaning yet deranged minds could dream up. Now, I think I really have. I wonder what's on deck for next weekend?