Minnesotans love their community celebrations both large and small, so it’s not necessarily serendipity that both the Strawberry Fest in Cottage Grove and Tater Daze in Brooklyn Park kick off today. And while these weekend-long events are clearly much more family friendly than, say, Wiz…
two defining memories from my hometown’s annual tater daze festival…
- 1986 - while stalking the game booths with a neighborhood chum, i happened by a pen housing maybe 30 rabbits. probably 15 white, 14 black, 1 lonesome-looking tan. along with the pen was a child’s wading pool filled with floating glass bowls. the game: bounce a ping pong ball into a bowl, win a rabbit. sparing you the drama, i won. i had to run home to asak permission from an adult, as the humane society (or whomever was putting this particular game on) did not want the bun to go to a home where it’d be eaten. for the record, i was appalled even at the suggestion, but i digress… a new hutch was erected, and within two hours, the lone tan bun who’d looked so lonely was home with me. we named him Carl, and he was the greatest. a big boy, he grew to well over 12lbs. i had him until i was 21. my heart is still shattered from the day i had to have him put to sleep.
- 1991 - the manager at the local domino’s — who also happened to be my boss — concocted the wonderfully awful idea to load up delivery drivers with $4 small pizzas and have us walk the parade route selling them to lawn-chaired (and often home-snacked/igloo-coolered) parade watchers. it was a catastrophic failure. people were there to see a parade of go-karted rotarians, child bikes with streamers, high school bands, festival royalty … not the poor bugger in the domino’s outfit, shilling crappy pizza. also, the pizzas only stayed hot for maybe 15 minutes. by the end i couldn’t sell them for a dollar, and those that did sell had their crusts hurled back at me as i made another pass. the manager fumed that it was due to lack of effort on my part, but that’s not what sits ill with me … no, what sticks like glue is the robust memory of my entire community staring at me like a leper in blue pants.
thanks for the memories, tater daze. the very good and the very humbling.
