A Busy Weekend - 7/23

Reserved Parade Seats

Last Saturday was Fish Day in Port Washington - the biggest event of the year. Folks set out blankets and folding chairs along the parade route two days early. Everywhere else I've lived that would meant you're donating blankets and chairs to whomever grabbed them first. Here it seemed to work. The other three parades in town followed a 1/4 mile route and took maybe 20 minutes. This parade followed a route of over a mile and was expected to last about two hours. Because the added length brought a steep hill into play, the direction was

First Prize Float - Red Hat Society

reversed and the extended route ran right by our apartment. We were near the very end of the route.

I didn't know how they could make it last two hours but two items made it possible. First, I think every fire department unit from every town in the county was there. I hoped there weren't any fire during the parade or it could have been big trouble. All the towns took advantage of the opportunity to publicize their own upcoming fire department fund raising events - brat frys, spaghetti dinners, etc.

Shriners

Second, every candidate running for public office from the county, state, or congressional level paraded  along with all the supporters they could muster. These alone made for a long parade.

Being near the end of the route, I noticed two things. One, the participants were pretty much spent by the time we saw them. Smiles were a bit less broad, waves were a bit less enthusiastic, and dancer's kicks weren't quite as high. It was a warm sunny day and I particularly kept waiting for the paraders in cartoon character costumes to just flat out collapse. Two, by the end of the parade the units had gotten spread out to varying degrees. At times they were as tight as they were at the start. Sometimes there were gaps of three minutes between units. The parade had to turn a corner about two blocks before getting to us and occasionally the next unit was no where in sight. People would just look at each other.

"Was that the end?".

"It seems odd the candidate for county clerk would be the last unit in the parade."

Then a band or something would show up.

The Obligatory Order of Fish and Chips

Living downtown on Fish Day worked well. We went early for the parade, fish, beer, the classic car show, and the arts and crafts show. Then we went home. In the late afternoon we went back for fish and beer. Then we went home. At night we went down for the fireworks display. Then we went home. We didn't ride any of the rides. Most of them looked like they had been built in someone's garage and the thrilling part was hoping they would survive your ride before flying apart spewing debris all over the midway.

Midway Rides

Arts and Crafts Sales

Classic Car Show

                         

 









  

Glockenspiel Show

Sunday was the end of Germanfest in Cedarburg. Most of the activities were Saturday so we missed the wife-carrying races, the beer bucket races, and the sauerkraut eating contest. We did see the glockenspiel show, a German band and singing, and, of course, German food and beer. We took a stack of German desserts home with us.

German Music

Desserts for the Road

Our First Bottle

Sunday afternoon we also bottled the wine we had made. Actually the yeast did most of the work and we just watched. Thirty bottles of Reisling is a lot, but we'll do our best to muddle through.