Covered Bridge Days ended abruptly Sunday after a soggy weekend, as the skies opened up shortly after two p.m., interrupting the Garden Tractor and Antique Tractor pulls. These two events had been hampered Saturday by the muddy ground; Sunday, the mud was sticky, resulting in short pulls.
Saturday, the rain was on-again, off-again. Some events were delayed until Sunday. Turn-out at the flea market seemed light Sunday, even early in the day when the weather was still cooperating. The pancake breakfast at Brodhead Chevrolet was unaffected, and weather couldn’t have been nicer for the Old Fashioned Church service in Veteran’s Park Sunday morning.
Somehow even the acoustics under that battered old pavilion were wonderful.
“It (Covered Bridge Days) started out rainy, but it ended up nice,” said Kim Markham around 9 a.m. before the rains came again. Markham preached at the Old Fashioned Church Service. The parade started at noon, right on time, but already Police Chief Thomas Moczynski at the head of the parade looked back at the backdrop of dark clouds to the south.
The car show and the motorcycle show went off without a hitch Sunday, and the food vendors did a steady business throughout the hot afternoon.
The approaching storm came as no surprise; there were two storms actually, chasing each other across the prairie. At the tractor pull, the announcer let folks know the storms were coming. Rather than a mad-rush for the safety of their cars, the pulling went on at a fevered pace until the well-predicted rains began.
What self-respecting farmer is worried about getting a little wet when there’s a tractor pull on?
“Other than the weather it turned out really well,” Nancy Sutherland, one of the festival organizers, said about the event. “We are really thankful for the people who ventured out and made our festival a success.”
