The Muleshoe Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture organized and hosted a Fourth of July extravaganza for Muleshoe and surrounding area on Tuesday, July 4, at the Bailey County courthouse. Vendors selling all sorts of items,  food trucks, food booths, classic cars, a cornhole tournament, frog and turtle races, Little Miss and Mr. Firecracker contests, a parade, and an evening of fireworks at the city park helped us celebrate this very American holiday.

The Fourth of July started for me at 7:30 when I set up my booth to sell plants, books, and have a marble-counting contest. Bill helped me get it all to my space next to the Bailey County courthouse, and I was set up and ready to sell by 9:00.

The marbles were all there and ready to be counted. I had bought this jar as a container to consolidate years of marbles collected and thought a marble-counting contest might be fun. The closest guess would win the choice of one of my books or a plant of equal value. At this point, I had not counted the marbles.

Since I was set up and ready, I walked around a bit to see who else might be there. I wandered over to the classic car show where I found a few cars parked and knew there would be more there after the parade. I also had to smile at the empty chairs already set up in anticipation of a good view of the parade.

Vendors and food trucks were set up ready to go as well.

We knew the parade had started down the street when we heard the fire truck sirens. After the color guard came the usual array of fire trucks from Muleshoe and area towns, followed by many tractors and very large farming vehicles.

One sprinkler service came with a section of sprinkler, complete with water, and showered the hot crowd.

A nice assortment of floats, four-wheelers, classic cars, business floats,  kids on bicycles, kids with their dogs, cheerleaders, various groups and teams on decorated trailers, and finally, horses, celebrated the 4th in the forty minute parade.

The grassy, shaded area under the trees at the courthouse was reserved for the visitors to the day’s events, and after the parade was over, that area filled up nicely. I have no pictures from the other activities since I needed to be at my booth, so I visited and enjoyed the day from there.

The crowd thinned out later in the afternoon, so I packed up and went home to count marbles! I scooped them out of the jar by the handful on the floor and counted piles of ten marbles till I had ten piles, marked down one hundred marbles, put those marbles in the basket, and started over. Numbers and I don’t always get along, so this was an easy way for me to control the counting.

It was fun to watch people try to decide how many marbles  were in the jar. I had forty-one guesses ranging from 67 to 634 marbles. The final count came to 542 marbles. One young man came so close-543! He, however, choose to decline the prize, so the official winner was the Lee family from Portales, J”Kobie and Elizabeth, with a guess of 525 marbles. They came by today and chose a plant for their prize.

We didn’t attend the fireworks in person this year in order to stay home with our dogs who aren’t crazy about fireworks, and some can always be heard near our house.  But from our house I can see the fireworks in the park, even from that distance if I am in just the right location. So I watched from that location. But it just doesn’t seem right to talk about the Fourth of July without a picture of fireworks, so I will leave you with a picture from last year’s event.

Till next year, Happy Fourth of July!

Thanks to the Chamber of Commerce for pulling this all together for us to enjoy.