So much activity in 24 hours

This year marked the 25th time I’ve covered the Dozinky Festival, and I’ve attended most of the others (in the 1980s and early 2000s) when not working for the paper. It never ceases to amaze me how so much activity can be wrapped up into basically a 24-hour period starting Friday evening.

The first visible signs of Dozinky in downtown New Prague actually start showing up on Thursday, with tents going up in parking lots and a few food stands setting up. I had to run to Mankato Thursday afternoon and drove back into town about 8 p.m. and there was already a Gyros stand set up along Main Street.

During the day on Friday more and more vendors started trickling in, and by mid-afternoon on Friday people wanting to go someplace downtown often had to leave the sidewalk as other booths were setting up. By late afternoon, some of the smells from the food stands began drifting down the street, making my mouth water in anticipation for what was to come. I’m not a fan of foods that contain too much peppers and onions, but the smells from the aforementioned gyros booth always makes me hungry.

This year I ventured down to the west side of Main Street and talked to Rob Krautkramer at The Car Lot. He organized a Race Car Show along Main Street in front of his business, with about 10 race cars and Ron Tuma’s Goliath pulling truck on display. I was there during the early stages of the event, before things got really going, but the people there seemed to enjoy getting an up-close look at the vehicles that run at Elko Speedway and the Arlington race track.

From there, I went to the staging area of the annual Cruise Night, at the high school parking lot. More than 300 cars were there, enjoying music from Wreckless, brats and hot dogs and anticipating a trip through Main Street and along the countryside.

I’ve always preferred going to the staging area rather than watching the cruise along Main Street. You get a chance to see some of the vehicles up close and talk to the owners, learning some of the stories behind the cars. The cars also bring back some memories. One of the first cars I saw looked familiar - an orange Chevy Nova. I asked the owner “Is that a 1973?” It was, and I shared that I drove a ’73 Nova during my college days. There were a few differences - mine had a white vinyl roof and was a two-door hatchback, but the interior looked very much the same and this car - unlike mine in the 1980s - was in beautiful shape. He shared that he and his wife used to take long motorcycle trips, until their son came along a couple years ago. “You can’t put a carseat on a motorcycle,” he said. “So we sold the bike and got this.”

I found myself downtown later that night (Patrick Fisher was covering the downtown cruise area and street dance) and enjoyed visiting with a few people, then brought some food home to my wife, who was babysitting our granddaughter and called it an early night… I knew I was in for a long Saturday.

Patrick and I go over the list of all the Dozinky events a few days beforehand and I came downtown Saturday morning looking to check off all the items on my list, starting with the opening ceremonies at 10 a.m. I made sure to get some dumplings and pork early - before the action heated up and I would be too busy to enjoy them later, and made sure to check off all the things on my morning to do list.

Then came the parade. While it starts about noon, the parade doesn’t hit the downtown area until about 12:20, and for the next hour, between Patrick and myself, we took about 800 photos of the various units. After the parade I quickly downloaded my photos on the computer and went back to work going over and checking items off my list. About 3 p.m. I met up with my family and we spent some time hitting up a few food booths and checking out some sites.

After getting the last item checked off my list, plus a few other photos, we found ourselves at Strike Force Bowl enjoying some relative quiet - granddaughter Alice spent some serious napping time first in grandma Jenny’s arms, then in mine

But my Dozinky duties weren’t over. Everyone headed home, and I came back to the office and finished downloading my photos before going home to collapse.

Between Patrick and myself we figured we took around 1,500 photos on Friday and Saturday.

We came in on Sunday and each of us went through our photos, getting rid of bad shots or duplicates and paring them down to a more manageable number. Jan Wann spent most of Monday going through the photos that were kept and on Tuesday we were presented with a list - the best of the best photos - that we needed for captions in The Times. There is no way we can capture everything that goes on, and we cannot print all of the photos we took. If you want to see more Dozinky photos, we invite you to go to our website, www.newpraguetimes.com and look for more photos on our Blue Button page.