Many Saturday events canceled due to storms

Cancellations and downsized events were part of Saturday's agenda as a result of the storms in the area.

In Perry County, where a tornado damaged 60 homes and injured four people at Crosstown along County Road 350, the two-day East Perry Community Fair opened Saturday with three horse shows (4-H, saddle and draft) and the truck pull cancelled.

Gary Scholl, vice president and director of the East Perry Community Fair board, was hoping the 25th annual mule jump would still go on. Ordinarily a few thousand people would be milling around the grounds Saturday, but the rain brought the figure down to a few hundred.

"Where the concessions are is all gravel. People are still going up there," he said. "A lot of our helpers are in Crosstown right now helping out with the tornado."

The Red House Interpretive Center scheduled The Sewing Basket and the River Heritage Quilt Guild for a quilt sewing demonstration but cancelled on account of rain.

SEMO Working Familes Day Picnic, scheduled indoors at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 1, held its inaugural event but did away with the pony rides. Coordinator Bill Walz said 25 attended but expectations were at 300 if the weather had been better. Candidates Jo Ann Emerson, Billy Pat Wright, Michael Winder, Larry Tetley and John Heisserer attended. Nathan Cooper cancelled but sent his representative. Walz said plans to continue the picnic as an ongoing event are in the works with another as soon as next spring.

Commerce Floodfest, a two-day event, cancelled its Saturday events except for indoor pageants. The event will kick off today with a 10 a.m. car show; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. reunion of Commerce people with prizes, a yard sale, games and food; 1:30 p.m. lawn mower race; 2 p.m. surprise walk; 3 to 4 p.m. karaoke contests, with museum open until 5 p.m. Coordinator Bill Bailey said, "The track for the lawn mower race is packed good, and where there's water it will be drained. The river's down. Two days' rain is nothing around here."

The Cape Shriners 10th annual Poker Run, with 11 a.m. registration today, is not cancelled.

It was a toss-up as far as garage sales were concerned.

Derek Knight of Melody Lane in Cape Girardeau advertised a seven-family garage sale for Friday and Saturday. Instead, he said, "We had a partial one-day sale." A few stragglers came in between the raindrops, but mainly it was a rainout.

A three-family garage sale on Bunker Hill still opened at 6 a.m. Saturday and according to Brandy Webb, "It's an awful lot of work not to have it."

Heather Cato said, "We had one major monsoon around 10:30 a.m. where we had to pull stuff back into the garage, but other than that, I think we made out better than usual."

cpagano@semissourian

335-6611, extension 133