"Fancy strut," I learned from Lee Smith, is that stride of the drum majorette that resembles the goose-step. It's an important Lee Smith 1944– Photograph by Susan Woodley Raines; courtesy of Lee Smithstep for the town of Speed (Ala.), which aims to have its sesquicentennial parade led by its prize-winning high-stepper in the Tuscaloosa statewide competition. Other sesquicentennial events include an outdoor pageant ("The Song of Speed"), produced by an outdoor pageant promoter, a riot, a fire, a bungled suicide, a couple of seductions, and an acute case of senile dementia.

All the unscheduled events are in some way connected with the town's birthday carnival, which explodes into a display of comic fireworks that are a pure delight. "Fancy Strut" is that rarity, a genuinely funny book that is satiric without being mean. Speed's social arbiter is a crazy lady possessed by delusions of past grandeur, and the...