Party! A celebration of Rural Nebraska.

[Anymouse]

After midnight, and the party in Broadwater, Nebraska still goes on. The bartender commented at the Community Center that they would need a Brinks truck to-night: the Starr Diner took in more money to-night than they normally make all year.

And that was even with free beer.

I even managed to get my wife Beth on the dance floor for three dances. Wow. Slow dances with Yes, Starship, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Disco, New Wave, amazing for this little rural town. Tonight, weighty discussions at home of Wicca and atheism, Richard Dawkins and Starhawk were put on hold for a village-wide party.

There was a raffle to-night of a Les Paul Guitar and a .410 shotgun, both from Mitchell’s Guns and Ammo of Broadwater, to support the new village hall renovation. Somehow I don’t think giving away a shotgun to a bunch of drunks is a really good idea, but Ron Mitchell assured me the ammo for the gun would not be delivered until Monday. We didn’t win either one. I pointed out to Mr. Mitchell that the gun would be more useful against the gophers in my yard than the guitar, but if it came to it, I could club 'em with the guitar.

There were people from all over Nebraska and several other states to-night at the Community Center. Even now after midnight the streets are packed with parked cars, and the party at the Center at one-thirty am continues unabated. Broadwater’s population seems to have swelled from 140 to over 20,000 to-night. The county sheriff’s office would do well to set up drunk-driver checkpoints on both ends of US-26 and SR-92. I ran into people to-night from all over the state that came to Broadwater specifically for the party at the Community Center. A rockin' town of 140.

Beth did not enter the Pac-Man contest as she said she would, nor did we enter the Rubik’s Cube solving contest, though they tried to draft us both into the contest as the town’s only two Mensa members. We pointed out that the smart thing to do with a Rubik’s Cube contest is not to enter.

I thought it was quite kind of them to throw a celebration little over a month after we moved here.

James
Broadwater Days Parade and Celebration: June 17-19. Theme - "Totally '80s." Broadwater Days is on Facebook.

Spoken by a Calif. tourist at the "Broadwater (Nebr.) Days" parade in Broadwater, 2010: "Why'd you take all the concrete up from your streets?"

Spoken by a Kans. tourist at the “Broadwater Days” parade to-day: “Why’d you move here?”