Carthage Straw Bale Days: Music, Melodrama, Local Hooch, and (gasp!) Dancing

Uh oh -- Dakota Jam has some competition! If you aren't washed away by the "Sea of Savings" at Madison's Crazy Days this weekend, you'll want to see Straw Bale Days in Carthage (how's that for some distinctive branding?). This tiny town is celebrating its 125th anniversary, holding an all-school reunion, and exhibiting its love of straw bales all in one weekend, August 3-5. Among the events taking place, the Madville Times notes with particular interest the wine-tasting from the Straw Bale Winery of Renner -- kudos to Carthage for using its community festival to promote South Dakota products! The wine-tasting and other fun events will take place at Carthage's Straw Bale Museum, "the only 'originally built' museum made out of straw bales in the U.S.A." (Hey, building with straw bales -- another great use of a South Dakota product!) Carthaginians have also mustered an acting troupe to stage a melodrama on the Friday of their festival, though this observer warns the players they'd better do their lines fast and furious, since their hungry audience will be waiting for the firemen's beef sandwich feed!

In the midst of all this frolickery, the our friends in Carthage show their true anarchist colors in daring to hold not just a street dance but a street dance with karaoke. An upstanding community like Madison would never permit such sheer revelrous chaos in its streets. But then Carthaginians evidently like living on the edge. Better head to Carthage while it's still standing!