Opinion

Fun times at Heritage Days

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

It was one of the best Heritage Days here in McCook. Perfect weather, great parade, booths and food trucks at the park, good entertainment venues at the bandshell and in Kiplinger Arena plus a tribute to one of McCook’s own, Senator George Norris. Adding to the good times were four or five high school reunions bringing old friends back to town. What more could one ask?

In times past your humble columnist had the volunteer job of organizing and running the parade. It was under my initiative that the parade lined up backward with the lead entries assigned places at the farthest distance from the start. That way all the participants can stand along Norris and watch the other entries flow by until it is time for them to fall in so they too can watch the parade at the start or at the end. Each year it seemed that I experienced frustration because after I had lined the entries up, usually the bands object to marching after a group of horses, and someone would rearrange some entries before the order went to the Gazette. Frustrating! Well, Maggie Repass, the current director came up with a solution. Maggie established a cutoff date for entries to her parade, then those who show up late and want to participate are shuttled off onto a side street at the top of Norris Ave, are not assigned a number and don’t get their script read by the announcer. No changes! And it worked beautifully.

The second issue that was a showstopper for this old guy was the new ruling that some bureaucrat edicted that parade participants could no longer throw candy or trinkets to the kids from moving vehicles. To throw candy one has to walk along the route. Evidently, our kids are not whippy enough to stay clear of moving vehicles but the kids in the surrounding towns' parades seem to do alright in snatching their goodies which makes parades so fun for the younger set.

In the welcome light rain, Grannie Annie and I attended the annual George Norris breakfast at 7:00 AM. Yes, there is a seven o’clock time to eat even though the sun isn’t up yet. Interesting speaker who told of the current efforts to change our Nebraska Legislature to a partisan body from the non-partisan body that it has always been since conceived by George Norris.

Not a good idea to have the Democrats aligned against the Republicans as is done in the US Congress. To me it is more healthy to have each legislator debate and vote in the interest of those who he/she represents rather than follow the dictates of a Majority Leader as Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of our House of Representatives does to the detriment of our country. Ask your preferred candidate and vote accordingly.

So your President Biden has decided that there should no penalty for those caught peddling the recreation drug we know as marijuana. Yes many states have already authorized its use and Nebraska has toyed with making it legal. Personally, I have never used it nor intend to. Still, I am of the opinion that it isn’t very wise to let it freely join the use of nicotine and alcohol which have and will continue to claim so many lives in this country. Still, prohibition, and the banning of drinking alcohol did not work out very well when it was tried in the United States and so now we will have three deadly drugs whose use will be encouraged for the youth in today’s society. Not a good idea in this old guy’s opinion.

Maggie’s late signup for the parade Saturday worked great for me and Grannie. I was able to park my old Model T close to the flagpole on Norris close enough to hear Rich Barnett so ably holding court on the radio announcing all the entries. Grannie has a bit of a problem crawling into the old car built back in 1925 so comfortably seated she had a great view of the parade. Then we joined in almost to the end where I loved my daughter’s sign on the back proudly proclaiming “Retired not Expired”!

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail

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  • I happen to agree with the candy throwing from vehicles in the parade. Children for years in our small towns have been able to avoid being over run by any and all vehicles. As for politicizing our Legislature, BAD IDEA! They need to remember that they were elected to do a job, representing us, not a Party! Look at the GROW HOUSES in Colorado that are now defunct! Plenty! The growers have not been able to keep employees, users lose incentives. We have enough non workers in this country!

    -- Posted by PforchRN on Tue, Oct 11, 2022, at 8:05 PM
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