Faunsdale, AL has a Crawfish Festival every year.  It’s basically a biker’s rally with crawfish and music.  My dad and I decided to drive over to Faunsdale ( 40ish minute drive) to get some crawfish and bring them back to Selma.  We thought the festival was this weekend, but it wasn’t.  All was not lost because there is one restaurant in Faunsdale and it only serves crawfish.  *Ca-John’s is an interesting little place.  The electricity (lights went out while we were eating once) and running water are the only things keeping this building from being a slum.  Also, this restaurant is only open two days a week…Friday and Saturday.

We are there at 4:30 on Saturday and they say they won’t have any crawfish until 6pm.  Riiiiight. Why would they have their product available on one of the two days they are open?  There isn’t anything we can do to kill the hour and a half (I’ve had a police officer advise me to not stop at the stop signs and stop lights in this city….it’s that crazy) so we drive back to Selma.  On the way back to Selma we see a guy selling “fresh crawfish” on the side of the road.  He said, “We just sold out but come back at 6.”  At this point I’m trying to figure out how the retail crawfish industry has developed a “just-in-time” delivery system.  How can you get crawfish delivered to your business on a Saturday evening?   Whatever….

By this point we are dissapointed but I’m still very determined to get these crawfish.  We get back to Selma and I am thinking about driving over to the crawfish festival in Montgomery (45 minutes) where I know I can get some crawfish.  I decided to call Ca-John’s to make sure they had the crawfish before making the trip again.  They said, “yep they will be ready at 6.”  So we start driving again.  On the way we stop at the little guy on the side of the road’s place and he says, “I just sold out.” Unbelievable.  Whatever….we can just go to Ca-John’s cause we know they have them.  I go into Ca-John’s, at 6:10, accompanied by one other customer.  She orders 5 lbs, gets her order, pays, and leaves.  I tell the lady I want 10 lbs. to go.  She says ok and goes to the back.  I sit there for 10 minutes excited that I’ve won this battle.  Wait….the lady comes back without my crawfish.  She says, “we just sold out.”  I can’t help but laugh.  I said, “We drove here because you said you would have them.”  She said, “well you can come back next week.”  Faunsdale you blow my mind!!

Now I’m really determined to get my dang crawfish.  Good thing there is a big crawfish festival in Montgomery.  On the way back from Faunsdale Heather calls  and says she will go to Montgomery with me.  Not excited about more driving but whatever I want crawfish. We are almost back to Selma when Heather calls to tell me that the Montgomery crawfish festival will be over before we can even get there. What!? Ok, ok , ok I give up.

I stopped in the grocery store when we finally got back to Selma.  What do you think they had tons of?  Crawfish……stupid crawfish.  I couldn’t even bring myself to buy them.  I walked out with my head down and called some friends to meet at a BBQ place.  I’ll never go to Faunsdale again.

4-40 minute drives

2-small town businesses

1-wasted Saturday

0-crawfish

This is a picture of the decorations that were right above our head at the BBQ restaurant.