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June 7, 2009

Trail drive full of excitement, surprises

VICI - The Great Western Trail Drive came right through downtown Vici once again on Saturday afternoon.

The longhorn cattle drive is the highlight of the three day event that includes a quilt show, parade, rodeo, fish fry and dance.

Spectators filled Broadway in anticipation of the parade at 11 a.m. Camera crews from PBS were around as well. They spent the past three days in Vici working on a documentary of the Great Western Trail Drive.

Just before 11:30 a.m., the beginning of the parade started to appear near City Hall. There was state Rep. Mike Sanders throwing candy from his pick-up truck. He was followed by a fire truck from Mutual, several tractors and finally a zebra.

That’s right, a zebra named Scooter made an appearance at the Great Western Trail Drive, showing that other four legged animals, not just horses or cattle, were welcome in Vici.

Following Scooter were a few restored cars and then four-wheelers.

In all, the first round of the parade lasted about 10 minutes. The paraders made a loop and came back through the city. Then the spectators had to wait.

It would be 15 minutes before the cattle arrived they were told. The cattle were on the highway as the parade was going through downtown Vici.

Of course estimating the time of arrival for cattle is not an exact science. The cows will go only as fast as they want to and no faster, unless the organizers wanted to start a stampede. But a stampede would not look good broadcast around the world by PBS.

So while the spectators waited for the cattle to arrive, they could make the rounds of the vendors set up along Broadway. One of the vendors, Clay Kemp, was selling pork sandwiches, with the hope of raising enough money to go to Hawaii to play baseball with a couple teams there.

There was also the quilt show for spectators to attend. For the third year in a row the Seiling Quilters Guild set up shop for their quilt show.

Joy Shaw, one of the organizers, said that the show has been doing well this year, just as it had the previous two years.

“It gives the women something to do when the men are out looking at tractors, horses and stuff,” she said.

Shaw did mention that more men attended the show this year than in previous years.

Quilts were displayed inside Vici’s City Hall. Quilters came from Vici, Seiling, Puttnam and Canton to show off their work. There were also vendors present at the show from Elk City, Woodward and Weatherford.

Linda Stewart, of the Quilters Knitche in Weatherford, was one of the vendors. She said this was the first time she had attended the quilt show.

“The ladies invited me up here,” Stewart said. “I tried to bring a couple Western quilts since it was a cattle drive.”

Stewart said that there had been several visitors to her booth and that she was a bit surprised by how many people had come in the past two days.

“It’s not the dying art that people say it is,” she said.

By this time it was announced that the cattle were within sight and would make their way through downtown in a matter of minutes.

Children clustered in the street to be the first to get a glimpse of the cattle. When they saw the cattle were in fact coming, the children ran back to the sidewalk to tell everyone it would not be long before they were face-to-face with the cattle.

But first there was the parade of flag girls, on top of horses, riding with the red, white and blue, along with other flags.

Then came the longhorns.

It was said over the public address system that this year’s herd of cattle might not have been the largest, but they did have some of the nicest horns of any herd in the country.

The spectators watched as the cattle lumbered through downtown, snorting and trotting at an even pace. The cattle drivers did not have to work to keep the cattle going in a straight line.

After making their way from east to west, the cattle drivers turned the heard around and brought them back through Vici before exiting to the rodeo arena.

The successful cattle parade ensured that the Great Western Trail Drive would be remembered by those in attendance. And this was only Saturday afternoon. The rodeo, fish fry and dance were still to happen later that night.

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