'Madness' afflicts the crowd Saturday

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 dangerous contagion swept through Newcastle on Saturday, Aug. 31, as madness overtook Main Street. It first started with a crowd gathering in groups of 10 or 20 but as the day went on it became a mob that clotted the sidewalk and the streets. It was so bad that the city had to block off the road in an attempt to stop others from entering the rapidly erected quarantine zone. 
But to no avail. By mid-day, the crowd had grown to about 500 inmates. I kept hoping the people would catch on to the devastation propagated on the city, but they didn’t. The lack of concern perplexes me even more since this was an event called “Madness on Main.” Here is an honest appraisal for the day in plain English, which was put on by our two main instigators, Martha Bickford, and Tasha Townsend, and people still came out in droves.
It started naturally enough with a pancake and sausage feed. Sounds innocuous and straightforward, right? And you’d think so since the Newcastle Fire Department was cooking up the tasty cakes and meats and the Ministerial Association was serving them up. You think you would be safe with such upstanding people preparing and serving the food, but you’d be wrong. I have it on competent authority, from an unnamed source — mainly because I don’t want to be named — that they had to have put something in the food. Or maybe it was the coffee and orange juice. I don’t know for sure, but something had the ‘mad’ juice in it.
The crowd became affected quickly. 
My first inkling of the madness that was to spread was the fact that breakfast was in the First State Bank of Newcastle parking lot. To further point out the insidious nature of the day, Bickford and Townsend had tables and chairs set out for people to sit at, imagining that would fool us into thinking this was a legitimate restaurant. And the shocking thing is, they succeeded. People were sitting down as early as 8:30 a.m. consuming this dangerous concoction. They had planned to feed up to 280 people but ran out quite soon. And it was too late. Those 280 were spreading the madness all over Main Street even before the end of breakfast. 
But I was bound and determined to stay sane, so I only had two pancakes and a few sausages. The firemen cooking the pancakes even made one that was at least a foot and a half in diameter, which took 12 people to flip over to cook the other side. Madness, I tell you! We also have to place part of the blame on Woody’s Grocery Store, who donated all this addictive stuff.
Breakfast was not the only insanity that was in store for the town. All along Main Street were distractions, vendors, and games right in the middle of the street. People were taking hammers to a car, and the law enforcement officers weren’t doing a thing about it! Children were defacing the sidewalk in front of Skull Creek Boutique with wild chalk drawings. Vendors were peddling their wares under tents and awnings where one would typically park. Other signs of this madness were bobbing for donuts, dunking for apples, and ice cream at the library. Hotdogs and hamburgers were also served right in the middle of a major intersection. It makes you wonder what kind of roadkill they fed us! To protect the public, I had one of each trying to determine if something was amiss. Unfortunately, my taste buds can’t tell the difference between beef and dog, so I’ll assume it was all okay, at least for now. But if I find out all was not on the up and up I’ll be getting back to you. 
All day long a stage was set up between Isabella’s Restaurant and the bank parking lot. Andy McKay kept warning the crowd that there was mass insanity breaking out, but then he’d play loud music that was purposefully intended to drive the people into an uncontrolled frenzy — and I use to have such respect for this man. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. 
I think the two most destructive influences had to be Mike Freeman of Farmer’s Insurance and the Newcastle Volunteer Fire Department. First, there was Freeman, who had chocolate pies with whipped cream placed on a table, and people in several age groups would line up and throw their faces into the pies. They gave out bibs, so this could be a nice orderly time. But the madness was too far grown by this time. They would slam their faces down in this chocolate goop and mush it back and forth, trying to consume as much as they could. I swear some of them, especially the teenage girls, were inhaling that mush into their noses. And all of this in an attempt to prove who was the biggest glutton of the day.
Farmer’s Insurance even kept records of all these groups of people. Here is a list of the ones that were able to consume enormous amounts of pie. I only post it here in case you ever have one of these people over for dinner, so you’ll be on your guard and can lock up your food. For the girls 8 to 12, Trinity Carter ate the most. For the boys 8 to 12, it was Tayshaun Bynum. The teen girls and boys were Sammie Simmons and Darryon Lamb, respectively. The Adult gluttons were Bo Johnson for the men and Cortnie Ondriezek for the women. I’m just glad that the Freemen family had enough class to offer wipes to these insane people after they had smooshed this stuff all over their faces.
But I think the biggest shock for me was when the firetruck came up to break up the event. Now, where I come from when the fire department shows up and braces a big truck, hooks up the hose, and aims it to break up a crowd, you leave! Did that happen here? Not on your Aunt Fannie’s fanny! The truck started blasting copious amounts of water at the crowd to disperse them. But all these insane people were running, not away, but into the water! In fact, they were so mad that they thought the amount of water the firetruck was putting out was not quite enough and brought 1,500 water balloons with them to throw at each other. Now, does that make any sense? How much wetter did they think they were going to get? Thankfully I was able to keep my head and determined not to participate.
After I went home to put on a dry shirt, I was still concerned for my fellow townspeople, so I went back to see if I could rescue anyone. Of course, the sickness that had taken over the town entirely was at an all-time high by sundown. People danced in the street until well after dark, again, right in the middle of Main. And some of those dances! Andy and Hope McKay also kept asking the craziest questions, too. They tried to lie to us and told us they were trivia questions, but I saw through all this. I should have seen this one coming too. Both of them were wearing these green T-shirts. From what I observed, most of the people who were corralling the public were wearing the same shirts. You’d think to identify yourself as contagious should have warned people off, but it didn’t. I know Bickford and Townsend had Chaos Queen on the back of their shirts — just another indication of this debilitating infection. How can you have more than one queen? Now I ask you, isn’t that mad! And being so identified, others still flocked around them, picking up the disease on purpose. At the dance, there was one song in particular that really pointed out how far this madness had spread as everyone was claiming they were daddy sharks, momma sharks, etc., then running away! Crazy.
I’m glad to report that on Sunday the town appeared to have gone back into their routine, and for the most part, it seems to have not had any lasting side effects. 
However I did hear some talk about how these people want to do it all again next year, so I’m holding off a final judgment about those side-effects. I do know that the sheriff’s department wasn’t exempt from it. When I asked Deputy Peter Dobro about any troublemakers or arrests, he stated that it was “pretty quiet” and there were no problems. Pretty quiet! No problems! That’s it! I’m going home now! And you can bet your boots I’m locking my doors!