Skip to main content

A Day At the (Duck) Races

This past weekend, the Red Cross and the school music department held a duck race at a park in Small Town. At this fund raising event, there is a clown making balloon animals, games for little kids, a dunking tank, a tent with hot dogs and their usual trimmings, and mini-concerts by the high school jazz band and steel drum band—my daughter's very last performance with these groups, by the way. The end.

Later in the afternoon, more than 1500 ducks raced down the creek, and prizes were awarded for the winners. If you've never been to a duck race, it may seem odd. I find it oddly fascinating. People buy ducks and are given numbered tickets. Hundreds of little plastic ducks, each with corresponding numbers, are dumped into the creek, and a guy in waders herds them down to the finish line. They funnel through one at a time, and the winners are collected.

I didn't stay for the actual race because it was such a hot day, and I didn't want to stand there idly waiting so I could take a picture. So, here is a picture of someone else's duck race, just to give you an idea of what the spectacle looks like. Fun.

I don't buy ducks, but I do sponsor the race with a donation, so I get my own special prize. A couple of days after the race, someone shows up at my door with a box of sugar cookies in the shape of ducks. I did manage to get a picture of those for you. What does that say about me?

Comments

savannah said…
i love those things! rubber duck racing is one of these most random things around... perfect for a summer day! xoxo
Oh yes we have duck races in most of the Cotswold villages! Though, because the villages are tiny, there are not nearly so many as your lovely yellow display! It's such fun, isn't it.
dive said…
Whee! What fun!
And what yummy looking ducklings, Robyn. Lucky you!
Mrs. G. said…
I love that picture of all the racing ducks. Nibble one of those sugar duck heads for me!
MmeBenaut said…
I think it says that you made a rather large donation!
they look delicious anyway.
We have the same think here for fundraising for the Red Cross too I think. The ducks do look cute and the children just love the races.
Lovely post for art Friday, Robyn

Popular posts from this blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It's good to be a nice person--to say nice things, to do nice things, to write nice things--but I declare an end to the use of the word nice. Nice is what you say when you can't think of any other adjective. Someone shows you a picture of their back yard--that's nice. Someone tells you about their afternoon adventure--that's nice. Or someone describes their childhood in great detail and sometimes with painstaking effort--that's nice. It's a lazy word, and it's non-descriptive. Nice is like mashed potatoes with noodles and chicken gravy all in a big pile on one plate with some canned corn for garnish. Everything is the same color and texture and base substance--starch (this is a favorite Amish dish). Nice is like a partly cloudy day in April when outside feels like inside, and you can't tell a difference between the lighting and the temperature of your living room and the lighting and temperature of your front yard. Nice is a glass of lukewarm water. ...

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...