Sheffield Lake Community Days 2010

Over the weekend, I did my civic duty and took the wife over to the 49th annual Sheffield Lake Community Days at Shoreway Shopping Center (or what's left of it until it gets redeveloped). I was actually impressed by the size of the crowd this year. The weather was great, and the city had a chance to show off the new wind turbine that will provide power to the Apples grocery store. (Read about it here.)

Having grown up in Lorain, I can't say I'm too nostalgic about Community Days. Maybe in another twenty years, I will be. My wife, however, grew up in town and went to Brookside, so she is much more of an expert on the topic. As I suspected, she confirmed that Community Days was the high point of the year for the local youth.

Surprisingly, we didn't run into any of my wife's Brookside High School classmates at the carnival. I say that because shortly after we were married and had an apartment in Sheffield Lake, we would always run into her fellow Brookside alumni everywhere! After a couple years of this, I began to wonder if that there was an invisible force field at the city limits that kept her graduating class from exiting the city!

Since my parents took my siblings and I to Cedar Point each year, I can't say that I really ever went to any of these shopping center-type carnivals while growing up. There was always the concern about nuts and bolts flying off the various rides, etc.

During college in the late 70's, however, I let myself get finagled into getting into a Viking boat ride at the Circleville Pumpkin Festival. You know the type of boat I mean; the boat goes baaaack and forth... baaaaaaack and forth. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy it very much. Good thing I didn't have any pumpkin ice cream that day or I would have barfed it all over the boat!

So when I saw King Tut gracing both ends of one of those boats at Community Days, I knew what to do: get the heck out of there and head over to something less dangerous– like the mouse roulette wheel!