Thanks for car show support

By Danny Essner

On Sunday, Sept. 18, the River City Rodders, in conjunction with Old Town Cape, hosted their 34th annual Car Show -- now known as the River Tales Classic. This was the fifth year for our show to be in downtown Cape Girardeau, and the feedback that we continue to receive from both participants and spectators regarding the downtown location is universally positive. Not only were the streets full of people checking out the cool cars, but the shops and restaurants were busy as well.

After having decent weather last year, Mother Nature was again unkind to us with rain almost all afternoon. Despite the threatening forecast, we still had 125 cars registered, with some driving from as far away as Evansville, Ind., and Clarksville, Tenn. With the promoting and marketing that we did, I feel that we could have easily had more than 200 cars -- and even more spectators -- if the weather had been better. We still feel that downtown Cape Girardeau is a great venue for our show and continue to look for ways to make it even better.

The River City Rodders and Old Town Cape would like to express our gratitude to all of our corporate sponsors for the financial assistance they provided, with special thanks going to our three major sponsors -- Auto Tire & Parts, Port Cape Girardeau and MTX Audio. We would like to extend special thanks to the Cape Girardeau Police Department, the Parks and Rec Department, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and Old Town Cape for the manpower and logistical assistance they provided and to the local media for helping us get the word out to the local community. Finally, we would like to thank all of the car owners and the spectators who attended our show this year. We encourage them to come back next year when we will once again host our car show on the second Sunday after Labor Day.

Danny Essner is the car show chairman of the River City Rodders.