KINDER'S COMMENTARY: SUMMER FESTS OFFER PLENTY TO DO

The arrival of Independence Day means the advent of the serious summer picnic season. In these parts, extraordinary efforts expended by dedicated and energetic citizens to pull off these events represent the very best of rural and small-town Americana. Not to mention plenty of the best home-cooked country food you'll ever find anywhere. Herewith, a brief summary overview of those parish and other picnics and festivals in the six counties I'm privileged to represent in the 27th Senate District.

Actually, of course, not all the parish picnics and other events wait for July. This year, for instance, Christ the King parish in the northern Perry County community of Brewer held its event a month early, in mid-June, the same weekend as Riverfest in Cape Girardeau. Scott City held its summer festival the same weekend. Weekend before last, in the Perry County Saxon Lutheran community of Frohna, they held theirs. No matter where the event of the weekend is held, everyone is made to feel welcome.

At all these events, there is some variation on the following menu of 100 percent homemade foods:

Fried chicken, kettle-cooked beef, corn, green beans, dressing, mashed or new potatoes, plus either ham or pork steaks, along with a wide selection of pies and cakes. All washed down with plenty of iced tea, lemonade or ice water. Of course, tempting though it is, immediate nourishment isn't the only attraction. There is usually a wide variety of quilts and other sewn goods for sale, along with canned and other preserved foods. Further, there are always what newspaper ads now call "the usual picnic attractions," by which they mean the games, the horseshoes, the bingo and other diversions.

The Fourth of July always means the huge Knights of Columbus picnic at Oran, annually one of the largest crowd events of the year in Scott County. It is especially so during even-numbered years, when attendance is swollen by politicians wooing voters. Servings of great food are at both the noon hour and again in the evening, before entertainment from a live band and the fireworks. For me, this event always follows a visit to the Sweet Corn Festival in East Prairie, in southern Mississippi County. The Sweet Corn Festival Parade is always a highlight of the morning of the Fourth. I remember campaigning there four years ago in a parade lineup that included an aspiring candidate named Mel Carnahan. He followed me to Oran.

Of course, other events on the Fourth include celebrations in Cape, in Fredericktown and in Jackson, where the Jaycee-sponsored event seems to grow larger each year. It is, of course, literally impossible for one to make all these simultaneous events.

Sometime around the Fourth of July always means the St. Maurus parish picnic in Biehle, a well-attended event in that small Perry County community. This year they'll hold it the afternoon and evening of Saturday, July 6. The next day, Altenburg is hosting yet another picnic in the lovely Saxon hills of eastern Perry County.

The rest of July and August up through Labor Day mean at least one such event every weekend. There's the New Hamburg Picnic of St. Lawrence Parish in mid-July, where to the above-mentioned menu is added wonderful barbecue sandwiches that linger in the memory, followed by the Kelso Sommerfest, Chaffee German Days, the Oran Fall Festival in August, Benton Neighbor Days, the Silver Lake parish picnic in Perry County and others too numerous to mention. Special mention and accolades go to the Leopold Picnic, always sure to draw huge crowds to this Bollinger County village on the last Saturday in July.

I haven't even mentioned all the Lutheran church picnics in other small communities, mostly in Perry and Cape counties: Crosstown, Longtown, Uniontown, Gordonville and Shawneetown, to name a few. The first weekend in August brings the gigantic, two-day Seminary Picnic in Perryville, where I've been going since campaigning as a kid for a hero named Tom Curtis back in 1968. This one is so big and represents such an effort that I've been told it's the reason Perry County doesn't have a county fair. Then, on Saturday of the Labor Day weekend, a sentimental favorite for me: The Apple Creek parish picnic in that charming and delightful community nestled in the hills of southern Perry County, near the Cape County line.

This is getting kind of long, and I have to go. To a picnic. Tough work, but somebody's got to do it.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.