Town celebrates Swedish heritage
The sky was as blue as Thorsby the Swedish flag on Saturday - perfect weather for a festival that makes high-end Swedish.
The event this year began with the crowd singing "Happy Birthday" to the city in compliance with the 110th anniversary of the founding of Thorsby.
Festival Committee President Swedish Tracia Bussey said that a record of more than 90 booths were set up in Richard Wood Memorial Park - an indication that the event is still going strong.
"It's exciting," she said.
Attendance has been difficult to estimate, Bussey said, because the festival was extended throughout the city. Her best guess was between 3,000 and 4,000 attendees. Among them were Ola and Berti Myrvold, residents of Torsby, Sweden; Thorsby’s sister town in the Scandinavian country. Bussey said the couple, who are actually Norwegian, were impressed with the number of young people who attended the festival. Word is that they plan to return next year.
“There were quite a few Swedish guests from Alabama,” Bussey added.
The stage was decorated with red, white, blue and US flag-colored, star-shaped balloons. A political trivia contest filled the time before the candidate speeches began. The prizes for the winners would please anyone who believes the nation's currency
I lived in a small town in Alabama, and not too many people got away from there. If they went to college, they came right back. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do other things besides work in the grocery story or work in the family business,
