Celebration Sunday

The upcoming Waitsburg Celebration promises to be a smorgasbord of festivities, from the colorful, prideful Main Street parade to the much-anticipated homecoming concert by the Frog Hollow Band.

Add to that the Classic Auto Show, the mayor's luncheon and the brandspanking new ranch horse racing at the grand stand, and Saturday looks like the heart of the Days of Real Sport centennial.

Don't be fooled, kids! On the face of it, Sunday's schedule looks more relaxed. But you can't miss out on the weekend's second bookend (the first being Friday). Af- ter talking to organizers, it sounds like the perfect day for families to hang out and do what families do best: have fun together.

Kids, young and the notso young-anymore, are ad- vised to get their parents out of bed and, after Cowboy church in Preston Park, head over to the fairgrounds for what promises to be a true celebration of country fun.

If Friday night's screen- ing of "Babe" gets you inspired about those crazy things people and animals do in farm contests, Sunday is your chance to watch and try some of them out.

"It should bring back some fond memories of days gone by," said Karen Mohney, who spearheaded the day's demonstrations and games, most of them at or near the grandstand. "It's an opportunity to pass them on to our kids."

For those of us who didn't grow up on a ranch or farm, Sunday is going to be just as much fun to discover the wealth and resourcefulness of downhome country en- tertainment. Or, in my case, confirm one's ignorance.

It wasn't until a few years ago during a sunny evening at the Columbia County Fair that I first learned what mutton busting was. For the uninitiated, it's the equiva- lent of bull riding on sheep for youngsters. It's one of the few items on the packed Sunday Waitsburg Celebra- tion schedule that I recognized by name.

The other one was sheep dog trials, which will kick off the Sunday schedule at 10 a.m. under Karen's skill- ful leadership. As many as two dozen sheep dogs from Seattle, Pullman and Boise are expected to join Karen's own dogs for time and point obstacle trials that will bring back images from the movie you will have just watched on Friday night.

If you've never seen dog trials from the grandstand, it's a feast for the eye. The dogs move the white sheep across the green of the infield like a shifting flock of birds or a school of fish.

As I glanced further down the Sunday schedule, there were fewer and fewer items I could visualize: goat tail tying, shoe boot scramble, cow plop drop, gold fish toss? Or how about sheep dressing?

Karen explained the first hands-on contest that starts at around 12:30, when kids have a chance to chase goats and catch the ribbons attached to their back ends in the goat tail tying. The first to succeed wins the prize. Oh yeah, young-uns, did I mention there are lots of prizes?

The shoe boot scramble, like the pine car derby that many a boy scout may re- member, goes back a ways. Everybody surrenders their footwear, throws it on a big pile and the first who re- trieves their shoes after the whistle blows wins.

Okay, now for the "cow plop drop." How could that be a hands-on contest without getting your paws dirty? Easy: It's not really hands on. A portion of the paddock gets a grid with numbers and organizers raffle off the real estate before letting loose "a well-fed cow," as Karen put it. Whatever square she deigns worthy to drop her plop is the lucky recipient. Talk about suspense!

Let's try sheep dress- ing. I asked Karen about its origins. She wasn't sure, but remembered it from country games in Starbuck. Before we get into a detailed description, let me say that goat dressing is easy to find on- line. Teams of three young- sters each try to wrestles down a goat and don it in a pair of boxers.

If that sounds like a boy's game, the sheep dressing sounds like the girls' coun- terpart with sheep for goats and a panty hose for boxers.

"People will enjoy watch- ing that," Karen predicts with an insider's wink. The eleven sheep used for this game are hers and they are most assuredly "not pets." Trying to get ahold of one of them may be a bigger challenge than getting their hindquarters into nylons or whatever material they use these days.

To round out Sunday's activities, organizers have invited the Dayton High School Robotics team to give a demo - maybe Frisbee throwing - of their artificial friend. Local firefighters are lined up to give their demos. The Waitsburg FFA chapter is putting on an iron man obstacle course that may remind our servicemen and women of boot camp.

And in between the spec­tacles at the grandstand, there will be all sorts of ongoing games at the booths nearby: a dunk tank with the mayor, a duck trough, face painting, darts and so on. For the final blast of the past, the whole crowd will be asked to relocate to Preston Park for the Duck Race, in which up to 1,000 plastic ducks will be numbered, raffled, launched from beneath the Preston Ave. bridge and retrieved at the Main Street bridge.

Karen said there will be $1,900 in prizes with $1,000 for the first-place winner. Ducks go for $5 a quack and five quacks for $20. Race starts at 3 p.m. and will be worth waiting for.

So stick around Sunday for the Waitsburg Celebra­tion's icing on the cake.

A complete schedule of events will appears in next week's special commemora­tive edition of the Times.