Look at cars, pet the camel, eat the Booya

October 4, 12:02 PMSouth St. Paul ExaminerRob Shirk

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Booya champions at work

In a city such as ours there are major league festivals as well as many out of the way events. Surely, the area whoops it up during the Minnesota State Fair, the St. Paul  Winter Carnival, and The Minneapolis Aquatennial covering the pride and celebrations of the state and both of the Twin Cities. Part of the fun is the anticipation of the events and the three occasions occur annually during the same period. If it's Labor Day coming up, it's time for the Minnesota State Fair. First week of February? How about going outdoors and freezing your you know what off during the St. Paul Winter Carnival? You get the idea.

How about if it's the first Saturday in October? The out of the way, mainly local festival called "On-The-Road-Again" holds sway every year in downtown South St. Paul. There is, as you may expect from the name of the event, a vintage car show where a person can go back in time when we were putting glass pack mufflers on our  Chevy Impala SS or 1968 Chevy Bel Aire. That old '62 Ford Galaxy 500 rag-top sure brings back some memories, doesn't it?

When you get right down to it, though, the party is really about Booya and contestants are set up in an area where we may taste and then judge the results. At the end of the day, the winner is crowned the World Champion Of Booya and who are we to argue?

There are simply too many places to mention where a citizen of these parts can get a cup, bowl, or any large container of Booya, a stew peculiar to the upper Midwest with its origin in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Almost any church will have a Booya fundraiser at some point during the autumn as well as the local schools, VFWs, American Legions, The Rod and Gun Clubs and so on. It is, by and large, a blue collar crowd and I'd be surprised to see the 700 Billion dollar bandits of the bailout here. Some even say they have a "secret recipe" but I think a lot of the recipes are no more than one or two days old.

It is said that Booya is made with some sort of meat, whether it be beef, pork, squirrel, rabbit, or maybe the poor thing lying on the road that somehow vanished last night, just before they started cooking. Everyone starts peeling spuds and vegetables which are thrown with abandon into enormous tubs. You can't forget the beer. Lots of beer. This is Minnesota and Wisconsin, after all. Then the fire is lit and the whole thing is stirred with a canoe paddle, or at least it should be. The beer? Most of it is opened for the cooks and a little bit may even make it to the Booya. What? You think they use it all for cooking?

The little festival has a few tractors, a petting zoo, some ice cream stands, the car show, and a lot of laughs. But most of all it has the World Championship of Booya and during the first Saturday in October in South St. Paul, you can be a part of the fraternity.

There's easy parking all around and the whole thing is free, of course, except the Booya, which is pretty darn cheap and pretty darn good. It should be. This is, after all, The World Championship.