I do not like strawberries. The taste is OK, but that weird texture of squishy and crunchy grosses me out. I’ll drink a milkshake, I’ll slurp the Jell-O, I’ll eat a PopTart. I make excellent strawberry jelly. (Ask anyone!)

But the real McCoy? No thanks.

Thus, it always amuses people to hear that my entire high school career took place in the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World, Plant City Florida. And every spring, Plant City holds a Strawberry Festival. It’s a big deal—there’s a parade, there’s a queen and her court, it runs for a week, there’s, like, 8 acres of festival grounds, and the event features carnival rides, crafts, concerts, livestock shows, and of course pretty much any kind of strawberry concoction imaginable. The concerts were generally about as interesting to me as the strawberries: It was all country acts—big names, but not my thing. The first year we lived in Florida, we were in Tampa, and my dad drove us the 25 miles and 1.5 hours with festival traffic to see Loretta Lynn. Then we moved out there and my attendance became compulsory.

As a member of the marching band, I was required to work in the pie booth, chopping berries, slopping glaze into pie shells, spraying Reddi Wip on slices of pie and tarts. It was actually not a bad gig; the smell didn’t bother me, but I had zero temptation to stuff my face. Honestly, I was more the type to inhale the nitrous out of the whipped cream cans, but all ,my band besties were much too wholesome for that, so I refrained. My dad was always jazzed about these outings and I was routinely tasked with buying and delivering a pie for him—the one time a year he was allowed to put that stuff in our refrigerator since my mother is even less of a fan than I am, and she insisted that fruit in the fridge “polluted” the iced tea.

In retrospect, the Festival music was a missed opportunity—I was aware that the acts during my years in town were the likes of Roy Clark, Ronnie Milsap, and Randy Travis, and that they were legends, but they weren’t my legends, so I didn’t go. (I just looked at this year’s lineup and organizers appear to have branched out a little—they’ve still got Reba and Baily Zimmerman, but they’ve also got country blends, like Nelly and John Fogerty.)

I was amused years later when my husband later confessed to me that although he lived in Florida at the time and had a deep and abiding love of not only strawberries but also country music, he went to the festival “maybe once” because it always coincided with the first weekend of spring training, and baseball trumped berries.

Instead, the rides were what sucked me in. Each opening Friday night, I would get my unlimited rides band for $20 and roam the midway. My friend Judi never forgave me when we hung upside down through an entire ride of the Rock-O-Plane. The funniest anecdote I have, though, is when a very Religious Friend (RF) of mine got on the Berry Wheel (a giant Ferris wheel with big six-seater cars) with me and another Laid-Back Friend (LBF) of hers, along with a guy in line behind us whom we’d never seen before. Now, I was aware that this ride was a popular way to get stoned while avoiding The Man, but I was still surprised when this complete stranger lit up in front of us. LBF and I were exchanging glances as we watched RF, who at first didn’t seem to realize what was going on, but made a tremendously disapproving face when the smell hit her and she figured it out. The poor Stoner Guy saw her and, misinterpreting, apologized for being stingy and offered her some. LBF and I just about fell out of the car laughing while RF stiffly declined. When the ride was over, SG wandered off and LBF had to go meet someone and bid us farewell. RF and I were about 100 feet from the ride when she spied a cop and huffed, “They’re never around when you need one!” I wish this story ended with RF becoming a tremendous pothead in college, but as far as I know, that did not occur. Maybe it was the ride that saved her.

Anyway, whatever your plant of choice, if you happen to be in Florida in March, check out the Strawberry Festival. It’s pretty great.