Believing it to be like a recent event that took place here in town in which maybe 5 people would visit the stand at a time, I thought I’d add a little fun to it and create a couple of signs that said, “keeki baiten/shiai/geemu” One for each. "Baiten," if it was an actual cake stand, as in vendor; "shiai," if it was a game, and if I was wrong in saying "shiai", I’d simply put "geemu" below it to cover my rear.
Japanese is different; most certainly eye catching in such a small town. Eye catching equates to more visitors… or so I thought.
As I was walking toward this supposed stand with my wife and mother-in-law, I noticed a large crowd. Not large: HUGE! And it wasn’t a cake walk… it was more like a cake gamble. There were 40 some-odd numbers randomly placed on a 3 huge tables creating 3 sides of a rectangle. The fourth side simply acted as a barrier between the workers and the crowd.
The lines around the tables sometimes went two or three people deep. The game was that people were supposed to put a quarter on a number. Up to two quarters may be played on any number. A wheel was spun and whatever number it landed on, the winner would gets to choose a cake of their choice.
It was very fast paced and very fun. So much so, that I ended up playing, too! Bob Little told me that #1 was overdue to win. So I threw down and we’ve been best friends ever since! :) The cake I chose was all chocolate with chocolate frosting: quite delicious, I dare say!
Eventually a small group of about 6 kids from Carlinville Middle School came to play the game: Cassidy, Adelmo, Kyle, Kory, Kris and Maddie. It was unbelievable how much they won. By the end of the evening, the group of 6 ended up leaving with 15 cakes. Tragically, one was dropped, one was stolen and four were given away. However, since they left towards the end, I managed to talk them into waiting so that I could take a picture of the group with what remained of their winnings.
When I caught up with them, I noticed Cassidy’s mother looking rather not-so-happy. The first words out of her mouth were something along the lines of, “What the heck are we going to do with all of these cakes?!” Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. The imminent sugar rush of 6 teenagers would seem to be a task more suitable for the National Guard rather than a single mother! I don’t know how she faired that evening, but the happiness on the faces of those kids would make any task worth suffering… at least, I think.
Kody, Adelmo, Kyle, Maddie, Kris and Cassidy show off their winnings.
"The Gang"... in a nice picture!
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