The Festivals of fort wayne (Fort Wayne)

Member Name: Cammij

Product:	Fort Wayne
Date:	15/06/07 (120 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A wide variety of Family Fun

Disadvantages: None, we are just so far away

I was pleasently surprised to find my home town of Fort Wayne ready and waiting to be reviewed on Dooyoo. Even though we are a simple city of just a quarter million souls lacking professional sports and big city glitz we have a sundry of exciting family oriented activities.

Our city was founded 10 1794 on the basis of a Fort Named after the pre-emiminate Indian fighter named Mad Anthony Wayne who I believe was also famous for fighting some other European Country who would lock our children in schools and churches and burn them down until a guy who looked like Mel Gibson made them stop, but that was a long time ago.

What we are famous for are all of our festivals. Our biggest and happiest festival is the annual Macedonian festival in June. We have the largest number of Macedonian people outside of Skopje. We have good music, ethnic dancing, and of course delicious food. Why not come and have some pastrmajlija just like your grandmother used to make? Note- unlike other macedonian festivals that are often marred with violence caused by ethic Greeks and violent football matches between macedonians and Greeks, in Fort Wayne we just have nice greeks and they have not yet once ruined our festival.

Johnny Applessed Festival. Johnny Appleseed is buried in Fort Wayne. He is famous for being a work shy idle bastard who instead of holding steady work went all over the Midwest territory planting appleseeds. At this festival we have a Johnny Appleseed look a like contest for the boys (the fact no accurate depctions of the man exists is ok), we have homemade apple butter and plenty of bobbing for apples. We celebrate the apple as our city's official fruit. Why not come and try your hand at some games of chance and try a thick slice of Dutch Apple pie?

The annual St Mary's river dance of the Crawfish. On the first full moon of June, unless it has been unseasonably warm, then the first full moon of May all of the carwfish in the St Mary's river climb to the muddy banks and dance in the moonlight signing an ninty song. The past few years have been complicated by a large number of Canadian Geese who wait to eat them. But the police have taken to using their stun guns to disperse the annoying birds so that children can see the tiny american fresh water lobsters sing and dance. You have to wait behind that orange mesh security fence they put up and they do have cops on horses again that will beat the hell out of you if you act up and try to disrupt the crustaceans.

The allen County Steam Show. This steam show is probably the biggest and best in the country with a huge variety of agricultural and industrial steam applications being showcased. Unlike Ohio steamshows our steam engines do not blow up and kill spectators all the time. Enjoy a rustic return to simpler days and learn about Indiana's proud role in Agricultural and Industrial science.


Bridge Day. Bridge day celebrates fort Wayne's rich tapestry and ethnic diversity. Indiana used to not be so modern and enlightened and as a matter of fact once in the 1920s had a huge number of Klu Klux Klan members. In 1953 Myron Riedy attempted to marry Miraslava Marzona. He was a black Man and she was Macedonian american. The couple announced they would come to town to get married and a Judge named Haskell R. Pickens instructed the Sheriff to interecept them on the way to the courthouse. There is a clip of the sheriff that is often played in filmas about hate and ignorance where he holds up his shiny black baton and makes derogatory comments about Ms Marzona. the sheriffs department met the young couple on the bridge in full rior gear and ready for battle. What they were not prepared for was the hundreds of thousands of people who came to sing hymns of love and joy and bombard the cops with fresh cut flowers. Hate and ignorance lost that day. In the past ten years it has changed from areverent quiet vigil and memorial service to the couple to the loudest and most garish celebration of interracial sex in the world. Now it is a week long celebration in July. There are usually exhibits at the local museums celebrating the long and varied history of Interracial sex featuring artwork from ancient egypt and China. The local resturants all make a special treat this week it is a liver sausage served with a glazed donut. there is a parade of bi-racial children and a beauty contest for them. Some people find it rather offensive and it is misinterpetted and some feelings get hurt. I overheard one man telling his 9 year old daughter that this is a party for all the women who will have black boyfriends and white husbands. It is not about that, it is about love haveing no limits or boundries. In the past few years the festival has been losing too much money due to high security costs of hiring State Police to protect the participants from the Hate groups and to watch the militant blacks who show up to protect the same people. It is a madhouse. it is the right thing, for the right reasons but we got lost.

Fort Wayne used to have one of the largets spool factories in the world making spools for virtually every spool of thread in the country. In mid-April they hold the spool show where kids come and show off the brightly painted snake and animal puppets they make out of spools. Sorry to my aunt nancy who runs this, but you seen one spool show and you have seen them all. What a waste of time and spools.

In November is the annual Corn Husk Doll show two weekends prior to Thanksgiving. It demonstrates this old prairie art of making precious dolls from corn by products. The reverand Jim Abbot denounced the festival in 1893 and making "the babes of satan" and admonished that people should not make corn husk dolls but then he shut up and we kept making corn husk dolls.

In Early March we have the annual used phone book jubilee. For years Fort Wayne's stodgey and prudent German-Americans tried to utilize old phone books in novel and practical ways. Now there is a contest each year for the best idea of re-using old phone books. The spirit has caught on to some a degree that people literally must go to other cities to obtain phone books for their projects as all the local ones are spoken for. Last year Hiram Okforkene a local student from gabon won the contest with a chaise lounge made entirely of crinkled and wadded up phone book pages then covered in clear orange resin. Rudy Buchholz won second place with a dining room table made by compressing phone books and plugging 2 inch circular cores out of it that were then arrayed to make a set of chairs.

I was going to talk about the Yorkie terrier festival and the Horseradish summit and how Sir Alfred o Sidon brought the first horseradish from the old world but frankly I have written enough and I know all of you are sitting over there in the glitz and lights of london laughing at me and calling me a dumb farmer so I will not tell you any more about our lives and I really hope none of you ever come here where people are still nice and do not talk like thy think they are Monty python or something.

Summary: We have a wide variety of unique events