Oktoberfest in Campbell

I am uncannily fond of my hometown, Campbell, having experienced here my formative years (ages 2 - 10) during the plaid bell-bottomed 70's and serendipitously returned as a working adult during a nascent web 2.0 boom. Just as I stealthily return every so often to a virtually unrecognizable childhood home while living but a mile away in a condominium that was built while I played, as a wee lad, touch football on the asphalt cul-de-sac of Lovell Ave, so Campbell still plays discordantly with a reconstructed past it imagines once resided on its storied streets. Take the recently instituted "tradition" of a fall Oktoberfest arrayed along Campbell Ave (named after the founder of our town, Benjamin Campbell, who settled in the west after fleeing his home in Missouri, a great distance from Munich as far as I can tell). Only in Campbell would a Bavarian celebration be staged (with residents arriving in lederhosen and dirndl to dance a jig or two) with an Irish bag-pipe band hired to play at the intersection of First St. and Fire Protection Booth #3. In this town it's clearly camp that rings our bell.