Tinkerbelle has a night job.

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This weekend was the Dogwood Festival in my park. They claim to be celebrating spring, which officially starts with the blooms on the trees. It could also be called the Pollen Festival for the same reason.

I live about five blocks from the park, which means that the streets are packed with weekend visitors all looking for a place to abandon their car. And when I say packed I mean this weekend saw, supposedly, 120,000 people out enjoying themselves. Many of them trying to get into my driveway.

The festival has two music stages, one set in a huge meadow for rock, and one in a more sedate local by the lake. That one is for acoustic music. The festival is celebrating its 70th birthday, so as you might imagine, it is a big deal in Atlanta.

I spent several hours on Saturday walking around and enjoying the wet, rainy, let’s keep the folks at home, type day. Because of that the crowds were not bad, and all the vendors were happy to see me.

There were supposed to be over 300 artist booths, but I think there was half that number. There certainly was that many booths, but at least 150 seem to be selling food. I’ve never seen so many types of booths that dealt in single items. There was a Greek booth, not to be confused with the Pita booth, and there were several different types of Caribbean, Oriental, Cajun, not to mention Asian. Of course, there were every type of American junk food you could think of from burgers to dogs to waffles to chicken to wings, to the ever popular chocolate banana on a stick, with or with out nuts. A really terrific place to spend a Saturday. Particularly after waging a war on the waistline for over a year and a half.

Have no fear…I didn’t succumb. I was a good boy, though it was damn hard.

Now add all the people with all those food booths and you have a potential ecological disaster. To all of that add five or six sets of Andy Gumps at about 25 Gumps a set and you are talking big time global warming.

Coming home from the park I though about how my morning walk was going to go on Monday. That worried me.

This morning at 7:00 as I took the long cut through the park as I walked to work, I couldn’t believe it. The festival ended after dark on Sunday and at sunrise the next day there was hardly a booth, trailer or Gump in site. True the trash barrels were over flowing but there was very little litter scattered around.

I don’t believe it. What, are the elves or gnomes who come out at night to clean and neaten up the foliage? I will walk home 10 hours later and I’ll bet the it will be back to normal.

It’s nice to know that someone takes the park as seriously as I do.