Foul weather doesn’t dampen Mansfield Playday

MANSFIELD – Farmers work with and in the weather, so when overcast skies threatened to rain on participants and spectators alike in the Playday parade last Saturday, June 10, the citizens of the Town at the End of the Rails did not seem to pay any notice.
Entries from the classes of 1967 and 1977 to Three Rivers Hospital and Tom Pinger’s 1923 purple hot rod started at Kith Road, proceeded east up Main Street, turned around at Railroad Avenue and made their way back along the same route.
Three Rivers hosted a near-two-mile community walk that started at 9 a.m. in the Mansfield school parking lot, followed a loop around the town, and ended back where it began.
Just before the parade commenced at 11 a.m., Mayor Thomas Snell presented the town’s annual Award of Merit to Darrin Nelson, who accepted the honor in the company of his wife, Wendy, daughters Lexi, 4, Hanna, 9, and son, Ty, 7.
Among Nelson’s civil interests is the town’s railroad history that he began exploring a dozen years back.
“When I moved back from Spokane about 12 years ago I didn’t know much about the era,” Nelson said, but since that time has gathered a large assortment of rail memorabilia. That collection includes sections of the original rail, ties, tie plates, spikes and date nails from which Nelson and his brother fashioned a display for the Mansfield Museum.
The head on the date nail has “69” stamped on it. Nelson explained its significance.
“Back in the old days they would put a date nail about every hundred ties or so,” said Nelson. “That would let them know that the ties were put installed in 1969.”
The Wenatchee-Mansfield branch of the Great Northern Railroad was laid to what became Mansfield in 1909 and served the area until the mid-1980’s.
“They took the line out in 1985 because they wanted to use larger cars that were too heavy for the 68-pound rail,” Nelson explained.
The cost to upgrade the old rail to accommodate the bigger cars was deemed prohibitive, so the line was abandoned.
Three troopers from the Washington State Patrol carried the national and state colors to open the Playday parade.
The American Legion Riders motorcycle group preceded Miss Mansfield Playday, Tierra Miller, riding on a float pulled by a McCormick Farmall tractor.
Seven alumni from Mansfield High School’s Class of 1967 and six from the Class of 1977 offered visible proof that the years have been good to former Kernels.
Carol Sivak and Ron Satler from Malott promoted this September’s Okanogan County Fair in a banner-draped replica 1904 Oldsmobile motor carriage.
The Bridgeport school band, Mansfield Kritters and Kids, Sunny Alpaca, Three Rivers Hospital, the Scheibe Zoo, Mansfield Lions, classic cars and hot rods were among other entries to precede the ambulance and fire units that anchored the parade procession.