Memorial Day at Morocco Homecoming

Morocco's town festival, Morocco Homecoming, took place on Sunday. As the name suggested, it seems to be focused on having the locals and those who once lived in Morocco come together and have a good time. Festivals in Jasper County seem to want to draw outsiders in, and I do not get that feel from the Morocco Homecoming. (The emphasis in Jasper County festivals for drawing outsiders in is being reenforced by the Tourism Commission and the grants that it is giving to the festivals.)

Most of the activities of the festival are held in Recher Park, which is a couple blocks south of the downtown and about block west of the grade school.

I thought it was interesting that only two for profit companies were listed as sponsors of their 5K/10K run.

Late on Sunday morning Morocco held its Memorial Day ceremony at the park. The Cub Scouts raised the flag while the National Anthem was sung and then there were speeches.

The Cub Scouts then placed flags on the crosses, each signifying an armed conflict in which the U.S. had been involved. And of course there was an honor 21 gun salute and taps at the close.

When I last visited Morocco Homecoming in 2010 there was a historical tour as part of the festival. They did not have it this year. The informational booths by some of the civic organizations were also absent this year.

The festival had mostly food booths.  I thought that the most interesting booth was for the Morocco School of Ballet, which was an informational booth by a woman who will teach dance classes this summer in downtown Morocco.

I was there this year as a volunteer for CDC Resources, which  had a booth to raise awareness of its existence and services. The Rensselaer branch of CDC Resources serves adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities in Jasper, Newton, and Benton counties. It has one consumer from the Morocco area, which means that one of CDC Resources vans makes a trip to Morocco each day that the Rensselaer center is open. We suspect that there are probably others in the area that could use the services of CDC Resources, so we were hoping that we might directly or indirectly reach them. After all, picking up a second or third person in the van would be easy since the town is already on the route.

The ladies in charge of our booth brought 234 cups that for some reason Heartland Employment Services had ordered a few years ago for promotion of their program and I commented that we would undoubtedly take most of them back to Rensselaer. I was wrong. One of the ladies from our booth decided that since not enough people were stopping by to see us, she would take the cups to them. She did a marvelous job of working the crowd, something that is not in my skill set.  Only time will tell whether our venture (or adventure) to Morocco will have results.