National Night Out

Lighter than usual blogging tonight because we were involved with the National Night Out program for the Long Beach/Calvert Beach communities.  As Secretary/Treasurer of Long Beach Civic Association, Georgia was heavily involved wit the planning, and as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Beaches Water Coop, I participated as a member and camerman.

A hug bunch of pizzas to feed the masses, purchased by the communities.

Several local organizations had displays, including the Water Co-op (I plead lack of responsibility; I wouldn't have worked this hard...).  The local couple from Maryland DNR was there, giving away boating safety info and free whistles.  I took 3...

Jeff helping prepare free snow cones for the crowd.  By August standards in Southern MD it was a good night, only about 85 with drenching humidity.  We were briefly under a tornado watch, and a tornado touched down less than 10 miles away, but we never even got a gust of wind or a drop of rain.

A nameless volunteer fixed me a snow cone.  OK, maybe I had two or three (and  a couple of pieces of pizza).

According to the sign in sheets, we got a total of about 200 people.  Given the "Beaches" have a total of about 1200 houses, that's not too awful participation.  Lots of families with kids.









This family set up their own booth where they gave away smoked barbeque sandwiches.  Ah, excellent!  I held myself to one so as not to be seen as too greedy.

The usual activities for kid, face painting...

...and the ever popular dunk tank.












Georgia sat at the welcome table most of the night.  In a change of roles, I brought her dinner and drinks...

The country sheriffs, and local volunteer fire department and EMT were there with fire truck and ambulances.  Here one of the volunteer EMTs demonstrates the newest equipment in on  of the ambulances to an interested kid.


It ended at 8:00 PM, and we had it cleaned up by 8:30.

All in all, probably a worthwhile night, but we're glad it only comes once a year.