I love the St. Rocco's Festival - I do. My family is loosely connected to the St. Rocco's Church (several aunts and various cousins attend it), and the whole festival is a big part of our summer activities. Fried zeppoli, and hot sausage sandwiches, and the incredible dirtiness of Fulton Road after about two days of the Festival.

Let's start off with big first impressions. There is never anywhere to park. There just isn't. Expect at least a five minute walk. Then you get there: firefighters are usually there collecting for some sort of charity (this year it was muscular dystrophy), and cops wandering around in groups. There's shady-looking but still incredibly fun carnival rides, like the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Salt-and-Pepper Shaker (I don't know what it's really called, but that's what I think it is), and lots of booths where you can hit balloons and throw things and hit other things with water. Add to this: delicious food... such good food. Including homemade potato chips, homemade Italian ices, and giant hot sausage and pepper sandwiches that are dripping with juice. And zeppoli! Zeppolis are fried dough. Literally. They're fried by a chain of little bent-over Italian ladies who do this every year, and then powdered with sugar. I bought a dozen pretty much immediately, because, as my brother said, "There is nothing like hot zeppoli smell." There really isn't - zeppolis aren't doughnuts, or any other kind of bakery. You just have to try them, and when they're barely out of the grease-hot too, because if you wait until the next day, they're just not that tasty... but I'll still eat them, even when cold. There's Italian music blaring over loudspeakers, and bands like the Italian Band of Cleveland Sinfonica (that's right, and they rocked!). There's thousands of tear-off raffle tickets all over the ground, and the traditional greasy pole standing in the middle of the Festival.

And since this is a family event for me, we spend most of our time looking for family members, and talking about who we saw last year and why they're not here this year. For example, I heard about the fact that last year, my aunt and my mother saw a man who looked like a living Ken doll - perfect, non-moving hair, overly defined facial features that my aunt claimed were done with makeup, and pleated pants. Stunning.

All of this is for the Church and its volunteer works throughout the year. So, let's not forget the priest who's busy frying zeppoli and shaking the hands of his parishioners. Or the nuns, Sisters of the Most Holy Trinity, who came out and danced with some little kids to "New York, New York."

This year was just really nice. This is the first time in about four years that I've been in Cleveland on Labor Day weekend, and I loved it. And now I'm going to eat a cold zeppoli.