Tessie D

It’s Thursday and only 2 days until Spring Break! We’re not gonna go anywhere, but I’ll get to sleep in. And it’s the St. Patrick’s Day Festival this weekend. Every small town in Texas has some sort of festival—peach and melon festivals in August, peanut festival in May. Ours is the St. Patrick’s Day Festival in March, the first weekend of spring break. 

Ours always starts with a parade on Saturday morning. We start at the Dairy Queen, marching through town playing the school song over and over, and end at the Dr. Pepper plant. I know I’m supposed to be too cool for something like this, but I really enjoy it all. It’s not like a parade that you see at Thanksgiving with big floats or anything like that—instead, people will decorate their trucks and trailers with green paper machete clovers and white and gold streamers. Ranchers will ride their horses and everyone will throw candy at the kids who’ll scramble between tires and hoofs to pick it all up. I play trombone in the marching band and we always go first, right behind the parade marshal. Football players and the Drill Team all follow behind us. Every street sign, telephone pole, and mailbox will be decorated with green and gold streamers and four-leaf clovers. 

It doesn’t get more Texas than everyone in the county coming to town for the festival and there’s something really nostalgic about the whole day—a party that we’ve been having for as long as there’s been a town. There is something going on all day after the parade–Irish stew cook-offs, pie bake-offs, livestock shows, pig wrestling, live music, beauty pageants.  It’s always packed, and the unspoken dress code is the four B’s: boots, boobs, bellies, and butts. Wranglers so heavily starched that they stand up on their own, cut-off shorts, halter tops, and cowboy hats.

But, what everyone is most excited about is the carnival. They’ll drive into town tonight and start setting up tomorrow morning in the grassy field across from the city pool. By Friday night, the City Park will be packed—little kids running from ride-to-ride, teenagers holding hands on the Ferris Wheel, and parents pushing strollers through the exhibition annex.