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Super weather packs rodeo grounds |
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Wednesday, 13 June 2007 |
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Page 1 of 2 By Buck Traxler, I-O Editor
 ANTHEM SINGER – From the left, Colt Billmayer led the rodeo crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance and then sang the National Anthem on Saturday and Sunday at the Whoop-Up rodeo. Next to him is Kelley Billmayer and Brenda Ries who presented the American flag. I-O Photo by Buck Traxler
With two days of near perfect weather the rodeo grounds were packed on Saturday and there was another good turn out on Sunday.
All over from veteran Lions, there were phrases, like, “Isn’t this just amazing?”, “We haven’t seen crowds like this in years,” or, “Would you look at that, cars are backed up past the tracks to get in.”
Rodeo chairman Paul Olson who has “had” the rodeo for the last five years, commented, “Who said change is not good. We proved that it was a perfect weekend and team work made it all come together.”
The early entertainment on Friday of Erik “Fingers” Ray and Richard Matoon with their Whoop-Up concert sponsored by the Pondera Arts council set the stage for the weekend.
Gustafson, the one man band, kept his act going with music, some funny dialogue and a duet with his dad, Rib Gustafson as well as Richard Matoon.
Matoon is another one-man band who plays a variety of instruments and entertains well.
The Whoop-Up scramble, a first time event, had a good turnout on Friday at the Pondera Golf Club, a Calcutta held later at the PGC drew lots of folks and the high school Fun-fest for grades 1-8 moved outside of the Meadowlark School gym for the first time and had lots of kids in different events at the playground.
Saturday morning the Lions Club began the day serving up their famous ham and flat stack breakfast and saw an amazing turnout. They had ordered 1,000 plates and had to make a speed trip to the store to get some more, an indication of good things to come.
The 28th running of the Pondera Medical Center Fun-Run-Walk saw Gary Bjelland up from Great Falls to run again. He has not missed a race yet.
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