Local ‘festival’ brings notoriety to Men’s Club

In the bit, Letterman makes a gag of poorly-worded ads, headlines, and text printed in small town newspapers.
Letterman held up the ad and expressed incredulous commentary during the Testicle Festival piece, “All you can eat, all you can eat, all you can eat!” he repeated to loud laughter from the studio audience.
Steve Agenstein, president of the Gallatin Men’s Club, sent an e-mail to Letterman’s show inviting him to send somebody out to cover the event which is this Saturday, Feb. 17,  and told him he’d be happy to send him a recipe. They also sent the late night talk-show host a T-Shirt.
“We haven’t heard anything back,” Steve said. “But we didn’t expect to.”
The airing generated a lot of attention and the Men’s Club received orders for T-Shirts from New York to California.
“It’s kind of neat to be recognized on something as popular as the Letterman show,” Steve said. “He got some pretty good laughs for the whole bit he did.”
A couple of members of the club were watching Letterman when it aired. The rest watched the video downloaded onto youtube.com.
Steve was out deer hunting the day after the show aired. “I was up in a tree stand and my phone buzzed and buzzed,” he said. “I think I got about 20 phone calls that day.”
The name of the fund-raiser, Testicle Festival, was not the brain child of any member of the Gallatin Men’s Club since it had been used by other organizations.
“We thought, heck, we’d try one as a way to raise money and see how it turned out,” said Steve. “The first festival was a success and so we continued to do it. This will be our fifth year.”
Steve estimates that 200-400 people attend the festivals, depending on the weather.
“We expect there will be more interest this year than any other since word has gotten around, especially with the T-shirts. We put something different on the back. They’re a big hit with everybody.”
The turkey fries are served up, starting at 4 p.m., with fried potatoes and onions and baked beans. Miller Lite is sponsoring the club this year, so they will be giving away donated door prizes.
The Men’s Club also has fund-raisers during the Daviess County Chautauqua and at the Junior Rodeo.
“The Testicle Festival is not our biggest event, crowd-wise” said Steve. “But it’s fast becoming one of our main events.”
This year the Men’s Club will serve up turkey fries from Tyson. In years past, the club served Mountain Oysters from bull calves from nearby pastures. There was no charge for the meals in previous years, only a request for cash donations. In order to charge for the meal this year, the club had to meet USDA approval and was obliged to switch to federally inspected, commercial meat. They ordered about 100 pounds. The cost for the meal is $8 for all you can eat.
Planning and ordering and lining things up for the kitchen started around the first of the year. Members gathered early this week at Rains Natural Meat market to bread the meat, freeze it, and get ready to deep-fry it this weekend.
The 20-25 members of the Men’s Club take turns as chef. Generally four or five members oversee the cooking.
Some people think the dish is a delicacy. Others aren’t so sure. For somebody who has never eaten this cowboy cuisine, Steve would describe the taste, as “somewhere between rattlesnake and fried chicken.”
Steve said nobody’s really given him too hard a time about the, well, vulgarity of the name, “Testicle Festival.”
“Some people, people of delicate sensibilities — like my mother — just call it ‘The Festival,’” he said. “They leave off the first word. Most people think it’s pretty funny.”
Steve said he hoped everybody turns out for the festival this Saturday, even if they don’t want to try any of its namesake. They can come down and have a good time, support the club, and just say hi. If there are any guys interested in joining the Men’s Club, they can talk to members who will be wearing T-shirts and hats. The club is always looking for new members.