Billy Bowlegs Festival
In order to generate “local excitement” [sell stuff] the chamber of commerce is once again annoying people with the Billy Bowlegs Festival. This year the unavoidable part runs from Thursday, June 5th and finishes up on Saturday. The really obnoxious parade on Thursday screws up traffic and sends a lot of noisy people through my neighborhood.
Almost at bad as the parade traffic jam are the Friday fireworks. I know a lot of people enjoy fireworks, but they probably have not seen what loud noises and flashes of light can do to people and aircraft – I am definitely not a fan.
With luck it will rain the rest of the week… 😈
4 comments
Hey, your local “tradition” could involve a livestock show and rodeo, beginning with a trail ride that chokes up freeway traffic for several miles and ending, weeks later, with concerts that can be heard at least 5 miles away (with no radio/TV assisting sound transmission), and between beginning and end, fills restaurants and bars for miles around the site with loud, drunk cowboys/girls. Everything has its “attractions,” I suppose…
That happens on a much reduced scale North of I-10 in the agricultural area of the Panhandle. The people along the coast try to forget that the area exists.
Every community has a local festival that annoys the hell out of the people who actually live in the community.
I’ll give the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo points for a couple of things: one, although hardly any of the “cowboys” actually work as cowboys these days, at least the farmers really are farmers and really raise livestock, virtually all the serious participants ride horses and maintain their own, and the loud concerts at the end feature the best C&W artists money can buy (not that I am much of a country music fan, but even I know those musicians’ names).
But I admit I am glad that by the end of my IT career none of my clients expected me to wear boots, jeans, kerchief and even a cowboy hat to work for “Go Texan Day.” Even those that did in earlier years were willing to accept my square dance clothes as close enough. Yes, Steve Bates really did square dance for at least a decade, mostly with a club at… wait for it… Rice University. (Huh? where did he say?)
It sounds like they might actually make a profit on the thing, rather than messing up people’s lives for nothing, like our local show.
Why would I be surprised that Rice has a square dance club? They have them at some of the schools in the California system, and I remember taking lessons in square dancing in elementary school down here.
Real cowboys don’t wear what most people think of as ‘western wear’ when they are working, and people wouldn’t want them to wear their real gear in an enclosed space.