Ah, summer: The sammich season.

At Community Days in DuBois last weekend, I watched the DuBois Fire Department’s annual parade and walked through its festival with the all-time champion sammich in hand.

That, as regular readers might recall, is a hot sausage sammich, loaded with peppers and onions.

A night earlier, I made my first foray into a farmers’ market as a (sort of) farmer, and spent a half-hour sitting in a bag chair, listening to Brookvialle’s new Community Band help to inaugurate the Farmers’ and Artisans’ Market in the new community square.

Here is where I must stiffen my spine and put principle ahead of sycophancy.

The sammich I ate during that half-hour was a delightful, delectable concoction of pulled pork topped with fresh homemade cole slaw.

It was yummy. But it is only the second-best sammich of the summer season.

What is gutsy about making that declaration?

The pulled pork sammich was concocted by my wife, whereas the hot sausage sammich came from the Fourth Ward fire company booth at the Community Days festival.

I love my wife. I love my wife’s cooking.

But for longer than I have loved my wife, for longer in fact than I have known my wife, I have looked forward to the hot sausage sammiches featured during the summer season of fairs and festivals.

Ought I now, in the fear of disturbing domestic bliss, to discard that lifelong (or nearly so) allegiance to hot sausage and elevate pulled pork to undeserved gastronomical pre-eminence?

Pshaw!

I cannot be bought, not when it comes to sammiches.

But I do buy hot sausage sammiches, a lot of them, during the summer sammich season.

My wife dissents. Her pulled pork sammiches, she claims, are healthier.

Agreed.

Her sammiches, she claims, are fresher.

Conceded.

But why, then, would I rate the hot sausage sammich as a better summer season piece de resistance?

Chomp resilience, that’s why.

By its very definition, “pulled” pork is shredded. My wife’s smoker technique is a seekrit. Suffice it to say that it involves apple wood and an outdoor-fire assist from yours truly. But after the rub, after the smoke, the pork is ripped apart. It practically melts in your mouth.

The hot sausage, on the other hand, is stuffed together.

It and its juices slather one’s mouth, anoint one’s tongue and gums, and burble deliciously around one’s teeth when chomped.

Instead of melting, it sort of swirls around in there, leading to much chomping and chewing, accompanied by gutturals reminiscent of the eons-old growls of “This is mine!” by which early hominids terrified saber-toothed tigers and shooed them away.

So now that DuBois’ Community Days is history, what’s a sammich lover to do?

Rejoice!

The Jefferson County Fair looms, followed by the Clarion County Fair. In two short weeks, another Hazen Flea Market will take place.

Further afield, the opportunities are legion. Just use the Google to get the gaggle, seeking “fairs and festivals in Pennsylvania.”

Last year, I revisited the Jefferson County Fair a night after having taken it all in. Why? A hot sausage sammich for supper, that’s why.

Am I an addict? No.

I just love the sammiches, right down to the delicate aftertaste and aroma that linger in the fronds of my beard closest to my lips. Inhale, or surreptitiously flick a tongue sideways, and the flavor and aroma are blissfully resurrected. Nobody need be the wiser, unless, like me, you do not completely suppress the aforementioned guttural growls.

This year, to my surprise and delight, the attire at these festivals seems to have swung back toward what we senior citizens mostly regard as, well, normal.

Mercifully, I have sighted far fewer “plumber’s cracks” than appeared regularly a half-decade ago at the zenith of a fashion that revolved around shoving one’s posterior into shorts or jeans large enough to have held two posteriors.

The lads’ trousers and shorts actually fit, mostly. Of course, a few retrograde wide-butt outfits can be seen, but they probably exist for the same reason that I still don button-down shirts: I own them, and they are not yet worn out, so I wear them.

The lasses’ attire has a new wrinkle. I did not use the Google to find out its precise name, but it involves scalloped-out shoulders. The effect is more pleasing and less likely to cause an “Oh, my!” reaction than the female equivalents of the “plumber’s cracks,” those teeny tiny tops that threatened to drop to waist level with every bouncy step.

So this year, at least so far, I have found that I can sit in contentment as I people-watch, chomping and grunting to my heart’s content as I renew my love affair with hot sausage sammiches.

It is summer, the season for sammiches.

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Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.