Usually a person’s eyebrows raise when I say I grew up in a town of about 350 people (with a graduating class of 18) in northern Minnesota. Tiny towns are speckled throughout the nation, but how many have yearly festivals surrounding large waterfowl?
I have the honor of writing a biweekly column for The Honker, Middle River’s newspaper, and we’re on the cusp of the big annual event. Here’s my article about the fun ahead this weekend.
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“It’s funny the Goose Festival doesn’t have anything to do with geese,” I overheard kid #2 say to her friend while describing Middle River’s annual celebration.
“Of course it does,” I said with a laugh. “It kicks off goose hunting season each year.”
She tossed me a blank stare. “Oh.”
I listened to her animated retelling of the cozy events of the festival, and what had once been my memories were now hers—with a twist. My two other girls piped up with their recollections too.
As I listened, I thought of my three girls—all raised in the city—with their idyllic view of smalltown living. I tried to tell them Middle River wasn’t a perpetual Oof-da Taco stand any more than my 1980s teen life was a continual John Hughes movie. Most of the year, normal people enjoyed a normal existence, I even added. But they chattered on about fresh lefse and rømmegrøt, puppies for sale at the flea market, Young’s General Store with its creaky wood floors and retro sweatshirts, and their pockets exploding with treats from the passing parade floats.
I caught the girls’ enthusiasm, their words shooting me back in time to when the Goose Festival showcased diversions like the spirited bed races that thundered down the center of town, an outhouse-sized jail ready to imprison anyone who committed one fun infraction or other, and a helicopter that dropped numbered Styrofoam cubes for kids to collect and redeem for prizes at the local businesses. I remembered the pageant contestants, perched on cars in the parade and often wearing winter coats over their satin and tulle for the crisp fall ride. And I recalled the Ness brothers who stripped their old Impala’s insides of everything but the driver’s seat, welded in a rollbar cage, and stuck a fire extinguisher inside (just in case) for the demolition derby; the smell of exhaust and sound of revving engines flows through my mind even now.
As for geese, Dad hunted the town festival’s namesake a couple of times in the 1970s and butchered his catch on the kitchen table. A meal followed, and I took tentative bites, hoping to dodge the birdshot still suspended in the flesh, a far cry from what one finds at the Goose Cookoff of today’s festivities.
“Middle River: the Goose Capital of the World!” said the sign on Highway 32 as one entered my hometown back in the day. Nearby, a massive fiberglass replica of the Canadian bird sat on a pole to accompany the welcome, and my heart swelled. Once upon a time after I left home, though, I heard the fake feathered one alighted from its “branch” and disappeared under cover of darkness, but that’s someone else’s story for another day.
Goose on a pole or not, happy 47th year, Middle River Goose Festival! You make my heart swell still.
