As the president of the West Marin Lion’s Club and the 2010 chairman of Western Weekend, I am pleased with the outcome of the weekends events; especially Sunday’s parade. June 6 started at 0630 lining the streets of Pt. Reyes Station for the floats that would occupy 20 to 90 feet of street surface awaiting the parade start. It took four of us about 2 hours to line all of “A,” ”5th”, “6th” and “C” streets. Actually we were lucky in that the spacing seemed to just work out. The Wells Fargo Bank Stage Coach entered at the corners of “B” and “6″th. just as if we had planned it. The Coast Guard “Rapid Resopone Boat” ended up at the corners of “4th” and “C” streets. Again, just perfect. Someone watching would have thought that we knew what we were doing.
There were plenty of riders to consider, so we kept all the horses sequestered on “5th” street and just fed them into the main line-up when appropriate. Overall, I think we did a pretty good job of placing the animals so that they wouldn’t get startled by sudden noises or back fires from antique farm equipment.
In total there were “54″ floats consisting of animals, antique cars and tractors, marchers, drill teams and bands in the parade. The parade started at 1200 p.m. and went till about 1:30 p.m. . People lined the streets. It was noisey, exciting and smiling faces was the norm.
There was plenty of food after the parade, for West Marin Senior Services had their Chili cook-off, pie and cornbread contest., while simultaneously, the Marin County Farm Bureau hosted a chicken barbecue. People pigged out. Natasha Jones and her band entertained the crowd while they ate and watched Halleck Creek Ranches “Cow flop contest.” Never did hear who won the $500 prize for guessing which number the calf would poop on.
Of course, the Western Saloon was wild. But, it didn’t get too bad. Monday morning I had to go around town to check out the trash cans and street litter in town. Well, the Green Team of West Marin Middle School did their job, for the streets looked great. That was money well spent. We payed the kids $15 a piece to clean up the trash. And, with 20 of them there wasn’t any more trash than there would have been on a normal weekend.
It was a great weekend and I may do it again next year. Maybe?