Preparing for the Great St. Marys' Beer Tent

Every year, on the fourth weekend of July is the St. Marys Fair. And for those over the age of 16, it is known simply as Beer Tent (BT) weekend.

Everyone and their dog goes and the BT is probably the only reason why anyone comes to the fair. By midnight, the "tent" is packed shoulder to shoulder with everyone from the mayor, university students home for the summer, high school students, teachers, farmers, factory workers, bums, and even the town prostitute. If we're lucky, a few Stratford and London prostitutes will come out and a reverse bidding war will start!

"I'll do it for $50."

"I'll do it for $40!"...and so on until someone yells, "For Christ's sake Mom, go home! You too sis!" Good times. Good times.

The event is held on the parking lot of the arena, with a large canvas tent covering a portion and the rest of it just on the large gravel and hazardous pot-holes that land-mine the way to the urinals.

Every year, it is a right of passage for all the underage kids to sneak into the BT from behind the urinals. Oh--and the entire area is securely fenced off with orange, perforated snow fencing.

There is also an unwritten rule that only those without penises use the urinals and the men discharge their crystal clear Labatts Blue pee behind the urinals, exactly where the under-agers try to hop the fence--and usually fall. All of this is assuming bladders don't burst when they trip in the pot-holes on the way to sweet urinary relief.

It's so blatently obvious who is underage or at least new. They are the ones who have rolled in warm puddles of pee to get into paradise and claim it as a spilled beer. Then "chug" their beer and yell "Woo." Chug is in quotes because they only ingest a mouthful because they use the rest of the cup to wash the piss out of their shirts.

Every year, the same sequence of events happen. I run into at least four people who insist we get together sometime soon and then take the next 15 minutes summarizing the past year of their life since we last saw each other at the previous BT. Make arrangements to get together despite a total lack of interest and without the slightest intention of following up with them.

There will be at least one fight which is eventually broken up by the police, followed up with the loser's friends yelling at the cops.

Then the highlight...everyone runs like retarded AND drunken buffalo to the Sammy Souvlaki truck who comes into town one weekend a year and despite the drunken small town red necks, make enough money to take the rest of the summer off. Probably spent hosing the puke off the sides of the trailer.

Souvlaki, gyros and poutine at 2:00am while more drunk than Rhea Pearlman and Danny Devito are every time they get intimate is fantastic. That mental picture alone makes me want to drink.

Coincidentally, stain remover and bleach fly off the shelf the following week. A great business opportunity would be to sell plastic bibs that say "I ate at Sammy's during Beer Tent and my shirt now only smells like piss and beer."

This happens Thursday, Friday and Saturday every fourth weekend of July. Without fail.

The feat of surviving all three nights of drunken debauchery is known as making the Triple Crown. This year, I'll be making the Double Threat (two nights) and the Debbie will be making her first ever BT appearance. I'm undecided whether I'll send her over the snow fence behind the urinals or not but this is St. Marys; the Queen of England herself would have to go over the fence if she wanted to be accepted.