wall celebration deemed a partial success

It was a reasonably good affair said paid spokesman Kent Obermeyer last Friday.
HootPress Exclusive - Wall, SD.

The 99th Annual Summer Celebration in Wall, South Dakota was deemed a partial success by paid independent observer and Wal-Mart Loss Prevention Specialist Kent Obermeyer of Loveland, Colorado. Obermeyer, a semi-professional town-celebrationist, noted familiar town celebration trappings including an early morning jog followed by a short, orderly parade of cars and horse drawn wagons. "It's the wagons that get to me," Obermeyer mused, "that really makes for a fantastic, horse-filled parade."

Hootenanny sat with Kent after the parade in the wood paneled dining room of the local pharmacy. While Kent picked at a "ham dinner", including a small mound of plain yellow potato salad and a minature ceramic pot of "baked" beans, he explained the existential paradigm of small town celebrations, like that presently occurring in Wall.

It's a little like a wooden clock, painstakingly carved by a Woodshop Junior but incapable of keeping reliable time. You can't use it to power a belt-sander, can you? Or say you carefully covered a piece of plywood with a walnut veneer, and then left it in the closet until Christmas while you weaned a wildcat on saltpeter and sawdust. Would you be anymore likely to treat a bushy-tailed squirrel to an ice cream cone on the following Sunday. Absolutely not!

It was impossible for the HootPress team corespondents to contradict Obermeyer's argument (or check his references, for that matter since we were arguing about whether we should download more Spoon or the recently released Arcade Fire EP on our only company iPod while he spoke).

Obermeyer went on to downgrade his estimation of the Wall celebration with an indirect jab at the powerful, but ultimately ineffective town celebration committee headed up by the Kitterman Flower and Hospitatlity Conglomerate.

Where was the carnival? The Zipper, poorly crafted stuffed animals and the liter-of-pop ring toss? The games of skill or feats of strength? This local hospitality syndicate has apparently got a death-grip on this town's inherent creativity. The bands at the beer tent lacked originality, sticking strictly to covers. No fresh lemonade. No fried cheese curds. Have you people even heard of corn dogs? It was like the Soviet Union out there. You had to stand in line for a turnip then peel it yourself.

After a brief interlude of uncomfortable silence, we left Kent Obermeyer to his Drug Store lunch and retired to the adjacent cocktail lounge for a round of Bloody Marys with pickle spear and celery stalk. There we could watch the war coverage via satellite as we inhaled our cold, vodka-spiked tomato soup. Finally, dude showed up with the BC and a dozen Canadian 80s. In short order, Wall's 99th turned into the best celebration ever.