Well, you don't generally think of beauty queens as being vulnerable to lay-offs, but the Munger, Michigan, Potato Queen, has been thrown off of her throne for "failure to attend enough events as queen." (The info in this post was peeled from an AP article published in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Awareness of the potato-sacking came from my Rick T, my brother-in-law and tipster par excellence. He's got eyes in the back of his head for good blog fodder.)
Allison Nowicki begs to differ with the notion that she was slicing her events schedule pretty thin. She says that she appeared at plenty of events, including:
Miss Bay County Pageant, St. Johns Mint Festival, Bay County Fair, Montrose Blueberry Festival and Linwood Pickle Festival.
Allison did make one big mistake, however, in that she took a pass on the Bay City St. Patrick's Day Parade last March. She did have a good excuse: she goes to school 3 hours away from Bay City and had a compulsory school meeting to attend that coincided with the parade.
But let's face it, if the Potato Queen was going to skip an event, she might have been better off opting out of the Blueberry or Pickle Festivals, rather than something so completely pratie-related as the St. Paddy's Day Parade.
Allison's one big mistake, however, may have been compounded by her having "called the first runner-up and told her I wasn't going to make it."
The first runner up? No lesser than the daughter of the Munger Potato Festival chairman.
Easy to see how this one was going to turn out....
There were more goodies about the potato queen brouhaha in a UPI article (which I don't have a link to). In that piece, Ms. Nowicki (or is it Queen Allison?) says that the queen committee offered to rescind their dethronement letter if she agreed to keep her mouth shut. But Ms. Nowicki decided she wanted to go public.
There was a lot more for her at stake (steak?) than just the title. There were her mashed feelings, and her concern for future Munger Potato Queens:
"To me, it wasn't about getting a crown and getting a sash - it was about getting to meet people and showing my love for Munger," Nowicki said. "Who knows if they're going to do that to next year's queen? I don't want anyone else to have to go through this."
Well, who knows whether Allison Nowicki really got a raw deal - the chairman's daughter waiting in the wings to assume the tiara certainly looks suspicious - or whether there were a lot more county fairs; fruit, vegetable, and herb festivals; and parades that Allison opted out of than she's admitting to.
This year's Munger Potato Festival is coming up soon, and I'm sure this whole thing is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of some Munger potato fans.
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Okay, okay. I'm a big city snob making fun of the Munger Potato Festival, not to mention the Linwood Pickle Festival, and the St. John's Mint Festival. In truth, I actually like the idea of foods and products being associated with cities and towns. I miss the fact that nicknames like Steel City (Pittsburgh), Whip City (Westfield Mass), and Watch City (Waltham Mass) seem to live on only in brew pubs. Somehow names like "The Back Office Processing City" just don't have much of a ring to them. At least Munger, Michigan knows who and what they are.
2 comments:
Closer to home, how did you overlook Chicopee and its annual celebration of kielbasa? From the city's website, I quote:
"Each fall, one of the largest Polish celebrations in the United States takes place in Chicopee when 75,000 visitors come to feast on kielbasa and dance the polka."
Perhaps it was overshadowed by West Springfield's "The Big E".
With all due respect to the dethroned potato queen, I, as a festival queen myself do have to side with the board members of the Munger Potato Festival. Yes, I understand that school is a top, if not a number one priority, but by choosing to participate in any queen competition, you are commiting to everything that comes with it... including all scheduled appearances. If one is not ready for such commitment, then they aren't ready to be queen.
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