The Old World of Possum Festivals

There's one real big advantage to writing here on the Hub Pages that you won't find anywhere else on the world wide web in today's world. In the writing world it's like being high up in the sky on an airplane. You don't have to worry about what makes it run. You'll have time to just enjoy the ride, which in this case is simply writing. I've been down the road before of having my own web site, and to be honest it can be a headache at times. It's very time consuming, and it cost money to run a web site as well. There's also no guarantee that your work is being seen by others. Here at the hub pages as long as you abide by the rules you will have readers, which is easily verified with their comments. I'm well aware that there are other writing sites on the Internet, but the hub pages are by far the most popular, and all of the kinks will be worked out here one day again soon.

The web site that I'm talking about actually one day lead me here to the Hub Pages. Our topic was Possums, and at one time I even had the self proclaimed "Longest Hub" here on the Hub Pages. However I got a little carried away with it and the Hub Pages decided to put an end to it for me. which I feel was really for the best. I'm trying once again for the longest hub with - Grand Canyon Pictorial, and we'll see how that goes. The old web site that I'm referring to also came to an end as did "Possum Day". Things come and go in this world, and Possums ran their course. I'm not 100% sure if some of the words that I wrote on that old web site have ever been read before, so I wanted to toss them out here on the hub pages to at least give them a chance. Put your seat belts on, because you are now about to enter the old world of Possums.

We are not all alone in this universe, and the internet is a wondrous place with all types of people, whom both good and bad. The surprising thing about something so simple as the possum is absolutely mind boggling. Believe it or not we weren't the first ones (after Tennessee of coarse) to come up with this idea. It's actually been out there for quite some time. In the Florida panhandle in a place called Wausau they are celebrating their 41st possum festival this year. Out in the Midwest, a man known as Red Green has apparently had a series going on now for at least 16 seasons. There are possum recipe books out there with tasty delights in them such as possum pouch pie. There's an organization out there known as the International Possum Brotherhood. Now why couldn't any of our bright minds thought of a name like that? There's all types of good old possum hats, t-shirts, and a whole library of possum books and videos. There's something called the possum drop and the good Lord only knows what that might be. Believe it or not there's even a possum squeal ring tone for your cell phone. Also right here in the Piedmont, as we all learned just last year, we have our very own Possum Jenkins Band. Of coarse there probably won't be any room for them at our 2nd annual possum day since we already have our D.J. Rich and of coarse our very own Rock Star. There really is no end to what people out there have done with the little old possum, the list just goes on and on and on like the energizer bunny rabbit. We also now are officially on Google and the sky's the limit, and you all need to behave yourselves on our little web site. I just thought I would share this little bit of wisdom with you all that we are not alone in this universe.

Congratulations! Today we now have past the milestone of 10,000 hits on our website. Which is really quite a remarkable achievement. For everyone's information our fire counter only counts the first visit to our website, and any future visits from the same computer or computer address are not counted. We also average a dozen hits or more each day from our regular visitors. So as everyone can see in just 8 months and 1 week, this is quite an amazing accomplishment, considering our topic, and since our web site was just born in August of last year. After we throttled up and put our Possum propaganda machine into high gear, spearheaded by our very own Bencephus, and spread the word out on the web about our site, we had visitors from all over this great country. From as far North as Bangor, Maine, to the deep South of Tallahassee, Florida. From the West coast of Murrieta, California to the East coast of Hampton, Virginia. As well as a lot of states in between like New York, Maryland, Kentucky, Kansas, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Illinois, Pennsylvania & Ohio, to name just a few.

Some of our visitors really liked our website with comments like "It's a really nice site and interesting pictures." - from Watertown, New York. "Purdy dad-burned funny website!" - from Hagerstown, Maryland. "Looks like a good time!" - from Mooresville, North Carolina. "What I love about this site is we all can have a good time." - from Salina, Kansas. "I really enjoyed looking at your site, I found it very interesting indeed, keep up the good work." - from Orange, California. "Oh Yeah! Count me in.That's what I call innovation and forward thinking!! Now all we need is a name for our mascot." - from Chicago, Illinois. "So who came up with the great idea of having a possum festival?" - from Columbus, Ohio, and finally "It looks like you guys have fun at that possum day thing." - from Hanover, Pennsylvania. Of coarse we had our fair share of negative comments as well, which most of us have already seen on our wall of shame. Most of these negative comments come from those that don't understand us quite as well as we do. These are people that don't realize that we celebrate the possum and don't eat it, or know anyone who eats it, or do we associate with anybody who eats possum. So due to some of the inappropriate content it would be best to move onto other comments.

Some of our visitors, unlike us, seem to be keen to the idea of dining on possums, with comments like this - "Possums are just right for roasting over the grill. I recommend using hot sauce, garlic and basil leaves." - from Memphis, Tennessee. "Do possums taste good, I once lived in North Carolina?" - from Bangor, Maine. "Some people think possums are quite useful and tasty too." - from Perkasie, Pennsylvania. "What I wanna know is what's on the grill? I'm starving." - from Albuquerque, New Mexico. "I will only eat it if it's pink and moist." - from Tallahassee, Florida. "Eat more possum, the other dingy gray meat." - from Hazard, Kentucky, and finally "Possums! Bring it on to the BBQ capital of the world." - from Lexington, North Carolina. We had 2 visitors who view possums as a recreational motorsport event - "I consider possums to be more like rural speed bumps, which I never stop to check." - from Cleveland, Georgia and "It is much more satisfying to hit a possum with my pickup truck, than a groundhog." - from New Oxford, Pennsylvania. Which leads us onto our next group of visitors where we didn't exactly get a very warm reception to our bright idea of changing groundhog day to Possum day. We even had one fellow from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania compare our idea to blasphemy. And those in the New England area even thought less of our idea of changing St. Patrick's day to St. Possum day. It's for the best that we don't get into any of those comments. To say the least, not even considering the time of year, it was a very cold reception we received up there with that idea. We all find it hard to believe that anyone could take these 2 suggestions so seriously as some people did.

We had a woman from Kentucky write us a song which goes just like this - "She said don't hand me no lines and keep your possum to yourself." We also even had a women from Murrieta, California write us a possum story which goes like this - "If I were to check out that site, I Will tell you it's because of it's name Possum? Who came up with that, very interesting and it's a chapter in a day? If a possum had 7 babies, Wow, think of it she could tell a story every night...So it's nothing weird or anything?". Which was a very nice and imaginative story, that none of us has ever heard before. We made a new friend from Indiana who kindly brought to our attention a legal issue, which we weren't aware of that we needed to take care of as soon as possible, and of course we heeded his good advice. And finally last but not least we made another new friend from our backyard right here in North Carolina who is fighting for smoker's rights. Tobacco is what made North Carolina great back in the day. which many people seem to have forgotten now a days.

As we prepare for our 2nd annual possum day this coming September and our fan base continues to grow as it has with no problem in our first 8 months and 1 week, and future web based comments keep coming in around every corner, we need to stop for a moment and congratulate all on this fine achievement, and 20,000 hits are not far off either, or out of reach throughout the world wide web. As our Possum Brotherhood movement marches onward taking no prisoners, we need to remember that we're in constant competition with numerous possum capitals across this vast country and other possum festivals right here in North Carolina and other Southern states. To include a place called Clay's corner out of Brasstown, North Carolina. Which we all recently learned about and visited in one of our daily locker room conversations. We are now currently even entered in a contest to win a can of canned possum. And none of us have any idea what we'll do with a can of canned possum if we even win it! Hopefully we won't have that problem to deal with, and won't have to cross that road.

We are also in competition with possum pubs, possum winery's, possum golf courses, possum records and possum children's websites. As well as possum art, possum photography and just about anything else that you can think of that goes with the word possum. However with the possum power that was bestowed upon us from the great state of Tennessee, hopefully one day not so far off we will finally attain the much coveted Hillbilly Possum Peace Prize, which is everyone's ultimate goal in the possum world, and where everyone's fairy tales finally come true. Well if you actually read all of this history to this point, I would like to applaud and thank you, and for those that didn't I don't blame you one little bit. I'm not so sure that I would of read through all of this either! But this is what myself and Mr. Bencephus have been up to since the end of November and we are both happy to have finally achieved our goal of over 10,000 hits. We have finally made it to the top and we are now putting our mighty and powerful possum propaganda machine into the neutral gear until we are once needed again in the possum world. Keep the dream alive and have a wonderful Possum Day !