Manhattan, Montana, United States
Across the United States most small cities and towns have
some form of annual civic event that involves a parade, sometimes rides, and
the opportunity for citizens to encounter their local civic organizations at
booths at the event. In the mountain
West these are sometimes built around a rodeo event, as they are in the nearby
towns of Livingston and Ennis on July 4th. Bozeman has its own in July, called the Sweet
Pea Festival, to which I have gone to the parade but not the admission-charge
main event. In Belgrade it is the Fall Festival in September and in nearby Manhattan
it is the annual August Manhattan Potato Festival.
This is my sixth summer in the Bozeman area, but the firs time
I wen to the Potato Festival. Compared
to other events that sometimes take place on the same weekend like Crow Fair,
Bitterroot Highland Games in Hamilton, or An RI Ra Irish Festival in Butte, the
Potato Festival just doesn’t seem like that big a deal. But the local Gallatin County Republicans
have a booth and participate in the parade every year.
Being significantly involved with them this
election year, I decided to join in at the Potato Fest this year.
My first question is about Manhattan and Potatoes. While
Bozeman calls its summer civic event Sweet Pea Festival, that is more of a
historic matter. A century or so ago, the Bozeman area was a major producer of sweet
peas, but it is not anymore. The area
around Manhattan, however, does still produce potatoes. You would be somewhat hard pressed to tell by
the event, however, since potatoes are not much of a theme. Do the food vendors have potato-based special
for sale? Not really, although tou can
certainly get french fries, a stuffed bake potato, or poutine. As we were finishing up I even bought a
special-for-the-day pizza from a local restaurant, one covered with white
sauce, cheese, bacon, and slices of fingerling potatoes.
Many towns in the West hold a free community pancake
breakfast on their festival or rodeo days, Manhattan included. The line was long for the freebie, and
pancakes are at the moment not on my weight-loss diet, but I checked it out
anyway.
No, the pancakes were regular buttermilk
ones, not potato pancakes.
My primary functions in Manhattan were to help staff the GCR
(Gallatin County Republicans) booth and to take photographs and videos of the
group’s presence in the parade for the website. If you go to a county fair or a
civic event where group booths are set up, you usually observe a lot of bored
people sitting at their tables and not much interest from the crowd. But this is a presidential election year, and
there’s Trumpmania out there in small town USA.
People are still eager for Trump paraphernalia – hats, shirts, cups,
earrings, signs, bumper stickers – you name it.
Despite the fact that multiple commercial vendors selling Trump gear
descended on Bozeman just a week before, there was still tremendous interest,
and it turned out to be a fantastic fundraiser for the group. That is especially true since we finally
acquired a portable card reader to take credit and debit card
transactions. Most of the folks working
the booth, generally older ladies, were scared of it, so I ended up doing most
of the card transactions.
Manhattan is a very small town, so I wouldn’t expect its
parade to be too big, but for several blocks along the town’s main street both
sides of the road were thickly filled with spectators. Expected groups like the high school sports
teams, the local 4H and FFA, and others had their floats, local businesses
advertised from trucks in the parade, and a small group of Republican
candidates and supporters walked with banners and flags or rode in vintage
automobiles. Lo and behold, there was
even a small contingent of Gallatin County Democrats in the parade. The overwhelmingly Republican crowd in
Manhattan was polite, however, near silence but no boooos or hisses for
Democrats but big cheers for Republicans.
Selling t-shirts and hats and photographing a
parade is hard work! By mid-afternoon I was pooped, knackered as the British
say, and ready to make my escape as business in Trump paraphernalia declined
with the crowds. You often notice something while walking that you don’t when
driving, as I did then on my way back to my car parked on the edge of
town. I had heard of 406 Brewing, but
did not realize it was based in Manhattan.
What better a way to end the day than sampling a few of their wares
while sitting outside on their patio on an absolutely beautiful day!
2025-05-22