About this time a year ago, I was living in a small town surrounded by a lot of other small towns in southwest Arkansas. One day I was coming back from lunch with my coworker, Tina, when out of the blue, she said, “Girl, I thought about you this weekend. We were all at Mike’s Country Store for the Testicle Festival, and I almost called to see if you wanted to come down and join us.”
I froze in the middle of the parking lot and stared at her. I had never heard of such a thing. Did you know about this? My first thought was that this was something for men kind of like breast cancer awareness for women. I was very, very wrong. For several minutes I just kept asking, “What?” and then, as she explained it to me, I followed up with, “I don’t understand. Are you kidding?”
In case you are equally unfamiliar with this charming tradition, let me try to explain. Apparently, in the spring, farmers castrate (or according to Tina, “de-ball”) bulls. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but I don’t know what it is. At the end of the day, farmers have all these leftover cow parts. As she talked, my spidey-senses started tingling.
“Do they fry them?” I asked.
Yep. Apparently, they taste like gizzards. The whole event is celebrated by drinking (quite a bit, I’m guessing) and eating an assortment of fried snacks, including Rocky Mountain Oysters.