This road trip had been brewing for nearly a year.  It was in March of 2017 when I happened upon Dade City, FL.  It was antiques day or something, and every store in the small downtown, anchored by a massive central courthouse building, was open and there were merchandising tables set up on all the sidewalks.

So I stopped, had breakfast and wandered around a bit.  And I noticed some signs for the Kumquat Festival, an annual, one-day event held on the last Saturday in January.  I’d missed it, and resolved to put it on my 2018 calendar.

Why the kumquat festival?  It’s just a very funny word to me.  It always has been.  And I’ve never, knowingly anyway, eaten a kumquat.  Just made fun of them.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, to the 21st Annual Kumquat Festival.  This was not just an hour or so jaunt for me.  Dade City’s about 200 miles from my house.  So I combined a leisurely drive up there with a paddle on Blue Cypress Lake and a lunch at the Desert Inn at Yeehaw Junction and BINGO! Road Trip!

Dade City is still in one of those increasingly disappearing pockets of Florida where the urban sprawl hasn’t taken things over completely yet.  It is far enough north of the Tampa-St. Pete conglomeration and far enough west of Orlando’s Mickey Mouse madness that you can actually reach the rural outskirts of town without traveling through ten miles of a four-lane highway lined with commercial enterprises.  But don’t drive very far, because the stop lights and malls are creeping closer all the time.

I think it’s the town’s proximity to these huge urban areas that keeps the Kumquat Festival going.  It’s not all about the fruit, that’s for sure.  It’s about the vendors–more than 400 of them–most with some very good quality arts and crafts to sell, that draw the crowd, an estimated 40,000 people.

I wandered around the place from about 10:30 in the morning to about 3 in the afternoon and it was packed the whole time.  There was also live entertainment on the steps of the courthouse, an antique car show, food trucks, a kids’ bounce house section and, of course, the kumquat area.

I gravitated, as I usually do, to the vendors selling creative yard art.  I found some, all with stuff produced by those who were selling them.  I bought a piece from Robyn Lynn, of Robyn’s Garden.  She and her husband, Robert, live in Vermont and do a Florida circuit with their wares in the winter.  The other notable artist I encountered was Andy Hamilton of Twisted Minds Rusty Metal in nearby Lutz, FL.  His work reminded me of Mike Prince, who I met at the Bell Tower Festival in Jefferson, Iowa, in 2015.

But, hey, this is about kumquats, not yard art.   The fruit was well represented at Kumquat Central, an area at the festival sponsored by Kumquat Growers Inc.   This, from its website:  “Called ‘the little gold gem of the citrus family,’ the kumquat has a thin, sweet peel and a zesty, somewhat tart center. The kumquat tastes best if it is gently rolled between the fingers before being eaten, as this releases the essential oils in the rind. Eat kumquats as you would eat grapes, with the peel.”

So there you have it.  This is a serious foodstuff.  Born in south Asia (some 12th century references exist), introduced in Europe in the mid-1800s and shortly thereafter in the US in the form of the Nagami variety, the fruit grows densely on small trees with dark glossy green leaves and white flowers.  It is used in sauces, jams and jellies and other foods.   The growers’ display featured kumquat lobster and crab dip and kumquat sausage; a local restaurant offered kumquat pie, kumquat sangria and a kumquat-cranberry croissant, and a downtown bar had kumquat wine and beer on hand.  (Yes, all you Prime folks, you can buy kumquats on Amazon)

Did I like it?  Yes, but nothing to write home about.  Besides, to me the attraction is that it’s just a very funny word, that’s it.   George Carlin agreed with me.  He called them his funniest food. “I don’t even bring them home. I sit there laughing and they go to waste.”

In a disgraceful bid to flaunt the depth of my research, I must tell you that the phrase “my little kumquat” has appeared in no fewer than seven movies and that there has even been a poem written about them:

What? Kumquat?

Why me, you ask?

I ain’t no tangelo, got no class.

My line goes way back,

I’m one of a kind—original,

of the genus–citrus fruit.

Time to give my horn a toot.

By Ronald W. Hull

Not impressed yet?  How about this, from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: “According to the magazine, if you turned the runes on their heads they revealed a spell to make your enemy’s ears into kumquats.”

Saving the best for last, there is this from The Tonight Show, with the great Johnny Carson as Carnac:

ED McMAHON: Heaven has no brighter star than our next stellar guest, that omnipotent master of the east and former manicurist to Howard Hughes, Carnac the Magnificent…

Welcome once again, O Great Sage… I hold in my hand these envelopes. As a child of four can plainly see, these envelopes have been hermetically sealed. They’ve been kept in a #2 mayonnaise jar since noon today on Funk and Wagnell’s porch. No one knows the contents of these envelopes, but you, in your divine and mystical way, will ascertain the answers to these questions having never seen them before.

CARNAC: I must have absolute silence…

Q: What do you say when calling your quat?

A: Kumquat.

CARNAC: May a bag of Pop Rocks explode in your shorts.

Drum Roll Please

PS.

So what about Blue Cypress Lake and the Desert Inn, you ask?  Well, the high winds made paddling on the lake, even around the edges, unpleasant because of the high waves.  And Hurricane Irma has severely reduced the width and density of the band of cypress trees that makes the shoreline of the lake such a nice place to paddle.  And lunch at the Desert Inn?  Very nice as always, and this time accompanied by an elderly gentleman playing his acoustic guitar and singing country ballads in a deep mellow voice.  A pleasant Sunday afternoon treat.