Squelch ’91

The fair board offered a plywood stage. Mechanical declined to play on it. The band had never played a room without a concrete floor, and it did not intend to start in a field.

Mrs. Fasnacht walked the grounds with Del Krantz on the Wednesday before. Behind the livestock barns was the old wash rack: a concrete slab forty feet by thirty, with a drain at one end. Krantz knelt and knocked on it. He said it would do.

The board moved the canopy over the slab on Thursday. On Friday evening the band inspected it with a level and a flashlight and signed a sheet of notebook paper stating that the stage was airworthy. The sheet was taped to the canopy pole for the weekend. Every band played on the slab.

Saturday's bill held four bands with Kittens in the name. They came from Memphis, Olympia, Huntsville and Detroit. It is the only day on record that all four played the same stage.

Stompin' Kittens played at a quarter to two, three voices on one microphone. Machine Gun Kitty followed at three. They had formed that spring. Incarcerated Kittens played at half past five. The fair-board gate log lists four passes issued in their name. The band has since denied attending, and has denied the gate log.

Blackmarket Kittens closed the night at a quarter past nine. Pip Delacroix stood at the side of the slab for the whole set with her arms folded. Roxanne Delacroix is her older sister. Pip had watched her sister's band from the side of the stage since she was thirteen. She did it again in Kansas.

Council of Sleep required chairs. Not optional seating: chairs in place before the doors opened, one for every listener. The requirement was in their letter. Mrs. Fasnacht read it to the fair board in July. The board asked what the chairs were for. She said the last band.

At seven o'clock on Saturday, two board members and four volunteers carried three hundred folding chairs out of the 4-H building and set them in rows on the infield, facing the slab. The rows were straight. The Council inspected them and sat down.

The session began after Blackmarket Kittens had loaded out. No time was posted. Harlan Voth of the fair board locked the gate at ten minutes past three. The Council was still playing when he left the infield. Several listeners were asleep in the chairs. That was considered correct.

Old Man Creepers asked for the first slot on Sunday. They rehearsed on Saturday mornings at home and were used to finishing before lunch. They went on at ten o'clock. Earl Pittman sang into a microphone taped to his walker. Dot Ferraro counted the first song in at forty-eight beats per minute.

They finished at a quarter to twelve. Ye Old Squirts went on at noon, in full costume. The thermometer on the fair-board office read ninety-six. Asked afterward whether the costumes had been warm, Thaddeus Quill said the village had known worse summers.

Mechanical closed Squelch at nine o'clock on Sunday. Before the first song, Emmett Ostrander played a recording of a Continental engine at run-up through the PA. Several farmers in the crowd identified it correctly.

The band played for one hour and twelve minutes. Del Krantz logged it as 1.2 hours in the band's logbook. The hay bales were returned to the barns on Monday. The slab was hosed down. It has not been used as a stage since.