Midnight Madness in Bennington

After resting up for a couple of hours we showered up and headed toward Main Street in Bennington to find some dinner and enjoy the annual Midnight Madness being held Thursday evening. We had a quick supper at a pizzeria and then begin walking around window-shopping.

Midnight Madness is an annual event in Bennington where the downtown merchants offer inviting sales and keep their doors open late into the evening. When we had been in Bennington the previous Thursday evening downtown was nearly deserted by 7PM. When we visited the Madison Brewing Company’s pub we were among only a handful of patrons there. By the time we left around 10PM the pub was closing. This evening the downtown streets were filled with people.

It was interesting because there wasn’t any public entertainment or other festival type of attractions to incent people to come out. They were just there because, for this one evening each year, downtown didn’t close at 5PM. In a telling statement about small-town Vermont, while the event was called Midnight Madness, the event only lasted from 7PM to 11PM. Most of the folks that had come out were younger. Some of them told us that they always came out for this, but when we asked they couldn’t really tell us why. I guess it was just a habit at this point.

After browsing awhile, we headed over to Madison to sit for a spell. This evening the bar was nearly full. We grabbed a couple of stools and ordered a beer. Soon a couple in their early 20’s sat next to us and ordered two shots of Jaeger and two drinks. T asked them if that was how you were supposed to drink in Vermont. The young lady, Melissa, had just gotten a new piercing and was trying to dull the pain with a couple of drinks. I asked her if her new piercing was for a special occasion and she said that she always got one during Midnight Madness.

Midnight Madness was an exciting evening for them because it provided nightlife in their town if even for just one evening. We both grew up in small towns, much smaller than Bennington for that matter. However our hometowns are close enough to a larger city, Winston-Salem, that we didn’t feel quite the same isolation that young people growing up and living in Bennington must feel. Bennington, which appeared to be similar in size to Elkin, NC, is the largest town within 45 miles. The nearest city is Albany, NY, but it is 45 miles of 2-lane country roads away. Albany is not a convenient option for big-city amenities for the folks from Bennington. I asked if they ever went into Albany for entertainment. Rick said that he had relatives there, but it wasn’t a “place with nice people” you would go to for fun.

At this point it was nearing 7PM and the start of Midnight Festival. Rick and Melissa headed out. T also went down the street to go in a shop that had interested her, but which didn’t open until 7. While she was gone I started talking with another young man at the bar named Rob. He had relocated to Bennington from New York City last November. He and his wife had a baby girl, which made the offer for Rob to teach theater arts at the small college in Bennington very appealing. Rob had been involved with the production of several off-Broadway shows before leaving and enjoyed helping his students produce their own productions. He had come out to Midnight Madness because he had won the coin toss with his wife over who would get to come out and who would stay behind with the baby. T got back soon after I began talking to Rob. He offered to buy us a drink, but thinking of how Michel had treated us in Quebec we insisted that we buy him a beer instead. We both enjoyed our visit with him. He was very passionate about his family, his work at the college, and his dream of bringing more performing arts entertainment to this small town.

We decided to go and walk around for a bit and see what was happening. The blocked off portion of the street wasn’t very big; probably no more than 3 blocks of main street, representing maybe 300 yards of streetfront. Still, the road was surprisingly packed with an impressive throng of people filling up Main Street. Again, there was no live entertainment, no fair games or rides, nothing really to entice a lot of people to come out and mill about in the street. Bennington is not a very touristy town and I imagine that T and I, if not the only tourists at the event, were among a very small number of out-of-towners there. We enjoyed the festival until it winded down around 11PM and turned in for the evening. We had a long day ahead of us on Friday.

T's Terrific Thought of the Day: Home is never far away -- I saw a wine bottle from Rag Apple Lassie in the display of a Bennington shop. (Unfortunately, the owners did not know anything about the vineyard -- the bottle came with the wine stoppers that the store was selling.)