As you walk down the street in Louisville, you can see banners up on the streetlights that say something like, “Louisville—A Healthy Community,” in some sort of mayor’s initiative to make us all lead healthy lifestyles. Well, let me tell you right now that the organizers of said campaign must have an especially virulent hatred of everyone’s favorite Kentucky Derby Festival feeding ground, the so-called “Chow Wagon.”

Yes, that’s right, for those of you who thought Louisville was only about Derby Day and 60 tons of fireworks, the Chow Wagon is something of a Festival institution. This is the one time of year where all the professional minions of Louisville’s office buildings can come down to the park and feed their faces in the largest cesspool of greasy, fatty, fried foods that Kentucky has ever seen.

Today, some of my colleagues and I ventured out of the shell-shocked ruins of PresbyLand (see Monday’s post), into the bright sunlight of Riverfront Park to explore Louisville’s own Vanity Fair, the Chow Wagon.

Let me say, first of all, that the Chow Wagon epitomizes the rampant rip-off that is fair food. To even gain entrance to the area, one must purchase a little plastic “Pegasus Pin” for $3. “Don’t be so cheap, Kelsey! It’s only $3!” you say. But once you get in, you go on to pay outrageous prices for tiny portions of bad-for-you items—an average corn dog costs $4, with a drink priced about the same.

And yet we still flock to this circus, mainly for two reasons. One, I must confess that the food served is something of a freak show for a Pacific Northwesterner like me. I had never seen turkey legs on a stick before I came to Kentucky! The propensity to deep-fry everything is also foreign in my home of granola-loving latte sippers—one booth alone offered deep fried bologna, veggies, pickles, corn dogs, green tomatoes, twinkies, and Oreos. Basically, you name it, they can deep fry it down at the Chow Wagon.

The other reason I enjoy the Chow Wagon—in our health-crazed, carb-cutting, fat-slicing society, how often do we have the opportunity to eat foods that we know are terrible for us with impunity? Now, perhaps I should have stayed away from such temptations two and a half weeks before I have to fit into a small wedding dress. But gosh darn-it, I can’t express the thrill of joy I felt today as I bit into that creamy, deep-fried Snickers bar on a stick after lunch. I walked away from the Chow Wagon, my shirt covered in powdered sugar and my lips smeared in melted chocolate and caramel, and felt a surge of empowerment (or maybe that was just a jolt of pure sugar rushing to my brain).

So what if it was something like 10,000 calories? Who cares that PresbyLand is falling down around our ears? What about the 150 wedding programs I have to print out this weekend, the Hungarian wedding poem I have to paraphrase from translation, the dress I have to fit into? All the pressures and cares of this world faded away as I savored the nectar of that deep fried candy bar as it rolled around on my tongue.

Please do not take this as a suggestion that you should give up your whole-wheat pasta and salad for a daily dose of fried bologna and turkey legs on a stick. But sometimes we’re called to live into the moment and savor its glimpses of joy. Indeed, part of life is learning when to let go of our self-imposed restrictions and the guilt that accompanies them. We are a people of grace, after all, called to show even ourselves the grace that God has abundantly demonstrated to us and the world.

And sometimes, whether in the stress of finals, job deadlines, or wedding floral arrangement hell, it’s okay to cut yourself some slack. Remember, friends, Jesus WANTS you to eat that deep fried candy bar.

“This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot.” --Ecclesiastes 5:18

Kelsey