Shane Life

Did you know…

…Olathe, KS, my city of residence, is where the cowboy boot was invented?

To celebrate, Olathe throws an annual festival called Old Settler’s Day. It’s a crazy time for the city, culminating in a 3-hour long parade. Organizations and businesses from around the city have booths and spaces where they either peddle their wares or promote their organizations.

Our church, the Olathe Community of Christ, has had a booth there since the 1950’s, the early days of the congregation. The festival started in 1898, but I can find very little information about what it signifies. I’m going to go with the invention of the cowboy boot.

Saturday was my shift at the booth. Me, B, D, J and J arrived around 11:45 and were quickly trained by the crew before us, helping them to navigate the lunch rush. Around 1:30 PM, the parade ended and the lunch rush became chaos. One member of our church came up with the concept of a foot-long brat which proved to be incredibly popular at the festival. We had many workers from other booths coming because they’d heard of our brats.

Working with my friends was a lot of fun. Jason and I manned the front of the booth and interacted with all the folks purchasing food which Darin and Bryan fulfilled orders and Jeff worked the grill. Despite a couple of minor setbacks when we ran out of certain items, it went really well and we made an awful lot of money for the church while having a lot of fun in the meantime.

Still, a festival is still a festival. A carnival is a carnival. And a carnival in Olathe…well, let’s just say that the residents should not be so quick to put themselves on the same level as other Johnson County residents quite so fast. Olathe is still very much a farm town and Old Settler’s is a great example of it.