Let The Fun Begin In Post Falls Three-Day Celebration Opens Friday With Carnival

In all the 17 years Mary Rednour organized the city’s annual parade, it never rained. And she’s proud of that.

This year, organizers are hoping for a bit of the former parade veteran’s luck as they get ready for Post Falls Festival Days. The event begins Friday and continues all weekend.

The celebration includes live music, a bake sale, games, food, drinks and, especially, time for the community to gather.

Carnival organizers were busy setting up rides and games Wednesday afternoon at Q’Emiln Riverside Park. The 30 workers and 26 vehicles recently pulled in to town from Jackpot, Nev., and will travel on to Pinehurst next week, said Lester Yapp, manager of Candy Apple Amusements. The group, which has come to Post Falls for the past eight years, will set up 14 rides.

Rides and games will run Friday through Sunday. The parade will take place Saturday at 11 a.m. on Seltice Way. The annual parade began in the mid-1940s, Rednour said.

“We love the parade,” said Kerri Thoreson, director of the Post Falls Chamber of Commerce. “Our town’s still small enough that people still get creative with what they do.”

The chamber began organizing the parade in 1993. This year, more than 75 entries have signed up to join the parade. And there’s room for more. Thoreson, who now directs the parade, said anyone can enter until the parade begins its march down Seltice Way.

“This is our town, and we want to see it all,” Thoreson said.

Rednour, 60, now looks back at those days as hectic, but fun times. She started working with the city’s festivities in 1975 when her brother-in-law asked her to help organize community groups around town. Rednour went to parade seminars and learned how other towns arranged their parades.

“I went to school for parades,” she said with a hearty laugh.

Some years, more than a dozen floats would enter the parade, Rednour said. Other years, Rednour traveled with a Post Falls float to show off in other parades - one year she visited 16 cities.

In the early ‘70s, a Post Falls float traveled from Butte, Mont., to Penticton, British Columbia, at about 35 miles an hour, Rednour said.

“We put a windshield on it and buttoned it down,” she said.

After Rednour handed the reins to Thoreson, the chamber named Rednour the parade’s grand marshal in 1994.

“To me, that was a graceful way to bow out and retire, but I still go to them,” she said. “It was a lot of fun, it really was. I miss it.”

Rednour will be cheering on parade participants this year with her 7-year-old granddaughter.

In the meantime, Thoreson said she’s trying to figure out how she can get candy thrown at the parade again. Right now, she said, the street is too wide and the city doesn’t want to risk any kids getting hurt.

Children, adults and pets are invited to participate in the parade, then join a pet show, said Leola Oswalt, operations manager at Animal House, a local pet store. The pet show will take place at the store’s parking lot, 1600 E. Seltice Way.

More than 70 pet owners have walked their pets in past parades. This year, Oswalt said she expects to see close to 100 participants.

These 2 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Post Falls Days

At Q’Emiln Riverside Park

Friday: 1-9 p.m., food and craft booths; 1-9 p.m., beer garden; 4-6 p.m., live remote KZZU radio; 5 p.m., Battle for the Falls; 6 p.m., volleyball tournament; 6:45-10 p.m., carnival and live music, The Renovators.

Saturday: 10 a.m.-9 p.m., food and craft booths; 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m., rock-climbing wall; 11 a.m.-4 p.m., crafts for kids, Grand Pavilion; 11 a.m., Grand Parade, Seltice Way; 12-1 p.m., live music, Jim Morrison; 12-9 p.m., beer garden; 1:30-10 p.m., carnival and live music, Alex & Dick, Jim Morrison, Nick McDowell, Charlie Butts and the Filter Tips and Rhythm Dawgs.

Sunday: 11 a.m.-5 p.m., food and craft booths and carnival; 12-5 p.m., beer garden; 12-1 p.m., live music, Old-Time Fiddlers; 12:30 p.m., Big Wheel contest registration; 1 p.m., Dessert Days baking contest registration; 1:30 p.m., McDonald’s Big Wheel Race; 2-4 p.m., live music, Coeurimba; 4 p.m., baking contest winners announced.

2. First Saturday

Post Falls merchants will kick off a “First Saturdays” promotion this weekend. Participating stores will plan special events and sales on the first Saturday of each month through September. Organizers hope to showcase the variety of goods and services available in Post Falls.

Some merchants have indicated that their sales growth doesn’t match the city’s population gains, said Dan St. John, one of First Saturdays organizers.

“Nobody really knows what’s in Post Falls,” he said. The commercial district is spread out, and most new subdivisions are just a short distance from the freeway and other shopping options, St. John said.