Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
That first festival featured halibut and salmon fishing (no boats allowed), a ski race if
there was snow (a foot race if there wasn't), a dog sled race if there was snow (a bicycle
race if there wasn't), and a beard growing contest. If someone decided not to grow a
beard, he could be dragged before the festival magistrate, who imposed some imaginative
fines. Mudhole Smith was sentenced to shout loudly ten times, “Fly Pacific Northern Air-
lines!”
Today the Festival sells shaving permits. If you don't have one and you don't grow a
beard, I don't know what they'll do to you. Make you stand in the rain to watch the
parade, maybe.
Where you chose to watch the parade from depends on just how cold you got watching
the survival suit races down at the boat float that morning, which this year had the distinc-
tion of getting everyone, in or out of the water, soaking wet. This is an event in which
teams of intellectually challenged people gallop down the float, wrestle into bright orange
survival suits, flop into the water and sort of scoot/ float/ flap across the water to wriggle
into a rubber raft. There is actually a good reason for this, as the competition showcases
the need for knowing how to put on and move around in survival suits in a place where
everybody makes their living on the water. It's one of the many reasons I went to college;
I knew there was a warmer and drier job out there somewhere.
There was a warmer and drier place to watch the parade from, too—Serendipitea, a tiny
tea shoppe with a huge picture window which looks out on the first twenty feet of the
parade route. My friend Rhonda Sleighter and I sat down over a pot of excellent Earl Grey
tea and scrumptious Chelsea buns, dispensed by Lynne Steen, who seemed to have a kind
of circular light glowing over her head at the time. The view through the window was
fine, just fine.
The honor guard from the U.S. Coast Guard vessel
Sweetbriar
looked damp but de-
termined and maybe even heroic. The Iceworm, a long, blue, segmented critter with
dozens of little pairs of feet beneath it that walked, trotted, hopped, skipped and ran kept
accordioning into and out of itself. My personal favorite float belonged to the Cordova
Volunteer Fire Department which had a banner that read, “We thought the parade was next
week” as they frantically sawed two-by-fours and tied red crepe paper to the ladder truck
moving slowly down the street.
