Labor Day Weekend in Small Town America

I've spent Labor Day in this town before, but never experienced it to the extent I did this Labor Day weekend. Bottom line: our town goes all out.

We started off the weekend Saturday morning by participating in the all town rummage sale. I grew up on the east coast where garage sales were the norm on Saturday morning and I remember my mom dragging me out of bed at the crack of dawn to go and see what we could find. The "thrill of the hunt" was ingrained in me at a young age. Now apparently I'm forcing my husband to join the same club by making him get out of bed at 6:30 on a Saturday morning so we could go and put some stuff out at our friend's house. He was a good sport and we got to see this gorgeous sunrise.

By the time we got to where we were putting our stuff out, crowds of people were already there. It was seriously insane. All day it was like our town doubled in size by the amount of people coming to buy other people's junk. Rob wondered out loud how much of the stuff stays in town but changes houses. By the end of the day we ended up making $50 which we were very pleased with.

As a huge bonus we got to see every make and model of golf cart, ATV, scooter, and yes, even, homemade scooter known to man. I'm not kidding. Our two favorites by far were the homemade scooter complete with side car made from a plastic milk box. And yes, there was a woman perched precariously on it buzzing around town. Our second favorite we managed to get a picture of...

Yes, the golf cart on the right does have a huge plastic bass fish attached to the top of it. No joke. We laughed so hard.

Here are a few more photos from the adventures in rummage sales:

This was our landlord's beloved college chair which his wife told us to "send where all old chairs go." So we determined that to mean a guys floor at Taylor. We're pleased to report this chair is now living happily on Sammy 2.

All the stuff! Most of it was our friends trying to get rid of baby stuff. (Obviously not ours!) Everyone was pleased that a lot of things sold.

While at the rummage sale our friend told us we had to check out the Labor Day parade in downtown on Monday. In her words, "You will see everything ever made with a siren and even things that were not meant to have sirens, i.e. random cars. It's classic." Sure enough, Monday morning we heard sirens going off around 10:00 so we headed to downtown and experienced all that she said and more.

Here are some things we saw:

The Shriners on their little scooters. Rob really really wants one of these. We were a bit weirded out by the Islam symbols they have on their hats. Not sure exactly who the Shriners are anyways.

These watermelon were sweet! Somehow they are cool enough to make it into the parade on the back of a truck.

My photo of Congressman Dan Burton's truck isn't uploading properly, but we saw that too. And all all manner of political people and their interesting vehicles. I was beginning to think I was back in middle school where candy really DOES buy you votes. Everyone was throwing candy!

Unfortunately throughout the course of the weekend we missed the various gospel bands, the pancake breakfast at the Lions Club, the ice cream social, the cookout, and the Tuff Truck pull but I guess there is always next year!