Independence Day!

So I understand that I am a little behind on my news, but I have to share what I saw first hand on Independence Day. Have you ever been to "festival" or "Carnival" or a "insert your towns crazy name of three days set aside for elephant ears and corn dogs and strawberry lemonade, with a dash of not-so-safe carnival rides, that when you have to get on them you feel like you just licked the sidewalk or rolled in alley" Days? Now I want to clarify,... I am not saying all of these are bad or that all of them are good...or that even all of them have a point (other than to have a few days set aside for elephant ears, corn dogs, and strawberry lemonade, and to bring back that feeling you got when you picked yourself up after crashing your bike into the ditch that was full of weeds and trash and dust with a little water in the bottom so you kinda got your sleeve wet (the carnival rides). I just simply want to share what I saw a couple weeks ago.

When we were driving into Buhl, Idaho we were greeted by police cars that diverted us to the back roads so that we didn't drive on the Parade Route. YES..."Sage Brush Days" are upon us. Now with my stellar knowledge of the back roads, my family and I made it to our place on the other side of town along Main Street where we would enjoy for the next couple of hours horses, tractors, candy, people dressed up like...I think she was supposed to be Sacajawea, little El Korah cars and yes more tractors. Now, I think for a while the parade in Buhl had the record for the most tractors out of any parade in the world. OK, so that was a lie but there used to be a lot. The 2008 version of tractorfest was, thank the Lord, scaled down compared to years past. As I was sitting in my chair that was ever so comfortable catching candy from the John Deere guy who almost broke down in front of us, I heard my family laughing. I looked up to what at first appeared to be two more tractors on a flatbed of a semi-truck. But, no, this float was telling a story. It was a heritage story, I think. On the front of the trailer was the smaller, older version of the enormous 6 wheeled mass of farming bliss that was behind it on the flatbed. Now even I was impressed by the mass of this machine that would plow or pull or just about do whatever your farm needs are in no-time at all. This thing was huge. The thing I didn't get was why my family was all laughing,...and then it all made sense as my sister-in-law raised her camera to take a picture of a big sign that ran along the bottom of the float that read, "We've came along ways". Now I know why I spell the way I do. I probably graduated from the same school as these people. Now I must be very careful. My wife's family are pretty much all teachers and, yes, my in-laws were teachers at my school. So I know it wasn't them, but who messed up two of us. Someone had to do it. Then I began to think about it....someone had to proofread the sign before they hung it up, and it was able to get by them as well. As you can imagine, we all had a great laugh.

After making our way to corn dog central, we all ate... yes, corn dogs and had lemonade. From there, we made our way over to what was the culmination of my Fourth of July experience. Imagine a man-made pond about 15 feet wide and 40 feet long made of hay bales and plastic tarps with about 75 kids under the age of 4 with parents that added probably another 30 to the population, standing in the midst of the waterway. Now why in the world would over 100 people be standing shoulder to shoulder with kids in a fake lake made of farm supplies in 90 degree weather? Well it's quite simple you see,... Buhl is the Trout capital of North America and we are about to have ourselves a Trout Scramble. Oh Mah Gah! The truck holding all of the fish opens the hatch and water and LIVE fish start pouring into the reservoir. People are screaming, not just kids, everyone. Moms and grandparents are squealing and dads are getting on their kids for not "gettin in there and grabbin one". I am thinking to myself why is ESPN or CNN not standing next to me filming this whole thing as one of the most bizarre things on earth. Well, needless to say, when it was all said and done kids were standing proud with fish in hand posing for pictures, and I knew I had my next blog entry.

-Sebastian