The Dawsonville Moonshine Festival.

Here's what you do at a moonshine festival.

You walk around and look at hundreds of classic cars. You check out every detail--chrome, engines, interiors, fenders, and wheels.You know a '48 Cadillac, a '56 Chevy, a '76 Mustang (or any other car) from a distance, and you know the history and performance potential of each one.

When you see a shiny pink Cadillac exactly like Elvis bought for his mama, you talk for a long time to the owner (if you're Mike) and tell him about how your own mama had a part in the selling of Graceland to Elvis back when you were in high school in Memphis.

Here are the kinds of things you will hear people say:

(Fondly, like recognizing an old friend): "That's exactly the car I had in 1959 except mine was...."

(Standing back, admiring a  particular body from bumper to hood ornament): "What a beautiful piece!" You compare notes with other guys, tell stories, and can travel miles on a memory of particular steering wheel.

"Every-so-once-in-a-while," you dance in a parking lot or on a street corner, as Fifties music plays from one end of town to the other. You eat funnel cakes, popcorn,  boiled peanuts.

You remember how, years ago, when this festival started, people could buy moonshine in Mason Jars made in these-here mountain stills.  Everyone knows Popcorn Sutton, the icon moonshiner, whose wiry little cardboard self stands proudly in downtown D'ville. The history of this place is soaked in legends of hauling corn liquor down Highway 9.

Signs are displayed in some of the cars: "Please don't touch me.  I'm not that kind of car."

Thousands of people, young and old, liberal and conservative, show up every year to look at cars, listen to music, and buy mountain crafts. You can buy a slimming body wrap--from a woman nowhere near slim--or ointment to cure everything from eczema to arthritis.  Children climb onto cars, cameras click, and old men and young men talk about memories and the craft of car building.  The Sons of the Confederacy stand in booths selling books, Rebel flags, and t-shirts.

If you're me, you take pictures of round things: headlights, wheels, pumpkins, and doll faces--because you know nothing about cars. You have your picture taken beside a '48 Cadillac because it's the same vintage as yourself and you have a similar patina.

You talk for a while to the Georgia Author of the Year, Jameson Gregg--and Mike buys his book, Luck Be A Chicken. You buy three letters, D-A-Y, from a photographer who takes photographs of objects and architectural details that look like letters of the alphabet, and though you've seen this kind of project before, it puts you in the mind of looking for objects that look like letters.  Many things at a car show look like Os.