Fort Benton Summer Festival 5

The theme for this years FB festival was Irish so a lot of folks got into the spirit. Here is a group of very talented Irish washerwomen doing their dance along the parade route. Each carried a wash board, and they all had good moves.

The Montana "HOGS" (Harley Owners Group)were the loudest parade entrants by far. They revved thier machines the entire length of the route.

Not sure what this was about but what this person was doing with a bike rig did get my attention.

This was a "leprecon" who worked the parade route hard. The little girl in this pic was scared of the guy and sort of had to be held in place by her dad for this pic.

__________________________________________________________________________
The Fort Benton Summer Festival parade was pretty good. This year the Irish took over and a good time was had by almost everyone. Personally I was very disapointed that Monte, the Grizzly Bear mascot from Montana State U was a no show for the parade , although I heard he did "perform" during the day at a couple of spots in town. I had heard so much about Monte that I really wanted to see him. Actually at first I thought he was a real live Grizzley but quickly learned that Monte is just like Brutus Buckeye and Rocky Rocket (Toledo University). Monte is a big deal in Montana because he has been voted the #1 college mascot in the USA at least a couple of times. http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/09/14/news/local/znews01.txt and he does over 400 events a year in the state.

There were several cool floats and many threw candy at the kids lining the street. One group the Awanas were throwing out green plastic hats and there was a decent wind so the hats were rolling all over the roadway and kids were chasing them bewteen floats etc. That was exciting.

Every year graduating classes from 10-20-30-40 etc years ago have a class reunion and get their own floats . The class of 1959 was throwing out strings of plastic beads like they do at Mardi Gras and several women on that float thru strands directly at me. Not sure what it all meant but I do have a collection of beads as a souvenir of the parade.

While the Fort Benton Summer Festival is really top notch it has a ways to go before it matches the annual Versailles Poultry Days. Besides serving the best dead chicken east of the Rockies,what sets P-days apart from most other similar events is that somehow the State of Ohio allows 2 state routes running thru town to be shut down for 4 days so that a large beer tent can be set up on the roadway. In FB they only shut the main drag down for the parade and the reenactment bank robbery shootouts.