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Driving around Pittsburgh this time of year, you're likely to notice signs announcing church festivals. This tradition goes back as long as I can remember, and then some. To many Pittsburghers, it was a big summer event.

I grew up in Penn Hills where our parish festival ran for six nights. It started Sunday afternoon with a spaghetti dinner and ended Friday night with fireworks. In between there was gambling, skydivers, bingo, hayrides, raffles and plenty of junk food -- hot dogs, hot sausage sandwiches, fries, Sno-Cones.

That first night of the festival, walking to the church grounds was such a giddy-kid time. When you arrived, the atmosphere was overwhelming to every sense: the colored lights, the smell of popcorn, the sound of the merry-go-round.

To this day, whenever I hear the song "Patricia" by Perez Prado, I am transformed back in time, waiting behind the yellow line to board the merry-go-round. I'm holding my grandmother's hand. In my other hand is my ride ticket. I'm picking out exactly which horse I will ride. I want a white horse and one that goes up and down.

Next to the rides was the cotton candy booth. It was the epitome of eerie with that blue light reflected inside the glass box and some woman spinning the pink confection onto a cardboard cone.

The mainstay of the festival was the gambling games. After all, it is a fund-raiser. Our venue was so big that we had two Chuck-A-Lucks -- the big Chuck with a quarter minimum and the little Chuck. For the high-rollers, there was the dice table; for the grandmas, outdoor bingo.

The appeal of the Sugar Ham Wheel totally eluded me. You put down your quarter. They spun the wheel. And you could win a canned ham or a 5-pound bag of sugar. Boring!

But next to it was the Cigarette Shoot. You have to admire the blatant incorrectness of it. The front of the booth had rifles loaded with cork pellets. The back wall had shelves with packs of cigarettes. If you shot a pack over, they handed you a pack of cigarettes. No age requirement. No questions asked.

Every night we kids would go to the festival and every night we came home with more junk. Goldfish. Plastic leis. Bright-colored sticks with a wooden ball on top. And of course, the spin pictures. Remember those? It was a 5x7 card that you'd drip some paint on. The concessionaire would then set it on a turntable that would spin rapidly for 30 seconds. Voila! Psychedelic, man.

The festival was fun when we were kids; when we reached our teens it was an absolute blast! All your friends from school whom you hadn't seen since June were there. My parents went up to the church grounds early to help out; my sisters and I were on our own to get dressed and walk up around 7:30.

My parents left fresh-faced, girl-next-door teenagers. When we arrived at the festival, we looked like the Ronnettes. Tight white jeans. Hair teased a foot high and hairsprayed stiff. Our eyes were circled with black eyeliner and mascara. The pièce de resistance: white lipstick.

Guys were looking for girls. Girls were looking for guys. It was a hotbed of raging hormones. The teen dance was held Wednesday. If you hooked up with someone, you'd have a date for the big Friday Night Festival Finale.

And Friday was the Big Night. At 9, they announced the winner of the "Basket of Cheer" -- a straw basket filled with 20 bottles of every manner of hard liquor. At 10:30, the pastor pulled the name for the Big Raffle. Some lucky stiff rode home that night in a brand spanking-new white Cadillac. And that was when a Cadillac looked like a Cadillac.

At 11 p.m., the fireworks began. Half-hour later, it was all over.

The next day, the booths came down; the festival grounds became the church parking lot again.

The fun of a summer church festival will stay with many of us forever. And happily, the tradition continues.

As long as there are churches and summer nights, there will be merry-go-rounds, and hot sausage sandwiches and Chuck-A-Luck wheels. Just look for the signs.