Suburbs

This weekend’s Germantown Festival must mean that my daughter’s birthday is coming up.

The suburban gathering celebrates its 52nd anniversary on Saturday and Sunday as thousands gather in the city’s Civic Club Complex on the south side of Poplar Pike at the west end of the Old Germantown district.

As is tradition, crafters and other artists will display their creations as people stroll through the Civic Club Complex. C.O. Franklin Park sits on the east side, while Morgan Woods, with its grove of trees providing shade from the late-summer heat, provides the west border of the grounds.

In keeping with its history, the festival posted on its website that all of the booth space for vendors was sold out.

Reporter Abigail Warren told readers about the local charitable organizations that earn a significant share of their funding from concessions peddled at the festival. Some of them have provided their particular food or beverage for mulitple decades.

“It’s still small town-oriented,” Mayor Mike Palazzolo told Warren of the festival. “Even the rides are small for small kids. The weenie dogs are small dogs.”

Ahh, the weenie dogs. One of the highlights of the weekend with long-bodied, short-legged Dachshunds running through the Germantown Charity Horse Show ring. The races bring excitement to the crowd and pride to the owner whose pup moves its little limbs faster than the rest.

While there is other entertainment on the festival stage, people even walking can get an unofficial chuckle by looking for the weird places where people park, so they don’t have far to walk to reach the grounds.

To walk among the booths for hours.

Some of the more interesting parking decisions have come from people who decide a space alongside the railroad tracks that cross Poplar Pike would be a nice spot. Not realizing the front of their car is encroaching on the tracks.

Or the ones who choose the steeply slanted shoulder alongside Southern Avenue. They are really close to the festival entrance, but their car is teetering on the verge of someone touching their ride and it tumbling towards the tracks.

But the result is a nice community event. One that kind of starts the festival season, if you will. For example, the Cooper-Young Festival is next weekend.

As for the connection between the festival and my daughter – it seems that some decades ago, my wife and I were wandering through the event when it was closer to the crossing of Germantown Road and the railroad tracks. About that time, Jana, our first child, decided she was a bit tired of the place where she was developing the previous nine months. She wanted to let my wife, Martha, know she was planning her escape. Had enough. Anxious to see what was going on outside. A few kicks. Martha’s face changing to one of concern about the timing. Finding a chair for her to wait for the sensation to subside.

It was the stretch run for Jana’s emergence, but it was the start of it. A couple of days later after a lengthy period of contractions, our daughter made her way into the world.

Just about 44 years ago.

A POSTSCRIPT

Send thousands of cars rolling along Wolf River Boulevard east of Riverdale and have crews clearing out trees from a once-heavily wooded area, and it will catch a lot of attention.

That is what is underway on the Fulmer property. Suddenly, there was a wide-open space adjacent to The Bridges at Germantown Apartments.

The starkness of the vacant space is in contrast to what people have seen for years.

Warren checked into the project. Part of the reason it was such a surprise is plans for clearing the site were actually approved about six years ago.

The concept has changed a bit since then, but still includes doctors’ offices in keeping with the Germantown medical corridor along Wolf River Boulevard on either side of Germantown Road.

But until the buildings are visible, that site sure looks bare. - Suburbs editor, Clay Bailey

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