Honey Days means home, community

Honey Days. That’s it. That’s the sentence. What does that mean to you? I’m sure most of my readers have a story surrounding the event.

Hopefully it’s a good memory. For over 30 years this has been an event that resonates with people in this area, and as I have found out in previous jobs and endeavors, an event that resonates with people across the state.

But what does Honey Days mean to me? Quite simply, it’s home. It’s a time for our community to show up and show off a little bit. A chance for us to be more than just a quiet little community that can sometimes be seen from the outside as just a bedroom community for Brookings.

It’s home during the beanbag tournament. Watching your kids and their friends compete against strangers and locals from the community. Don’t worry, I give the locals a hard time when they are facing my boys. You’ve got to level that playing field out somehow! And at the end of the night, it’s cheering on the local team in the championship round against the out-of-towners.

It’s home during the parade. One of the best parades in the area if I do say so myself.

It’s coming around the corner of main street with a float and seeing a sea of people turning the widest street in town into a one lane road.

It’s falling behind because you are talking with too many people along the parade route.

It’s seeing people you haven’t seen since last year.

It’s home in the park during the burger and pork feeds. People sharing stories of years gone by as they break bread together. It’s the live music in the background while local organizations help serve and clear plates. It’s the giant grill and the burger crew sending out way more burgers than should be humanly possible in a short amount of time.

It’s even home during the street dance. Hearing the band start while you are still at your house and rushing out the door. It’s supporting the local fire department with your entry fee. It’s cutting loose with your neighbors and seeing some of them that can’t dance but still do it anyway. It’s being able to tell the groups of people that come on party busses that ‘Yes, this is my town!’

But Honey Days feels most like home on Sunday night during the town vs country softball game.

All the other events are done, and it is just the people that call Bruce home left. It’s a capstone to a phenomenal event every year. It’s a baseball diamond full of people giving each other a hard time, and most people cheering for a town win (this may or may not be true but since it’s in print it must be now).

Sorry, not sorry, there country folks!

Since the day I moved to Bruce, to me it has been a community of love, acceptance, and prosperity. It’s a community where I rediscovered my love for God. We support each other.

We look out for one another. We sandbag our neighbors’ houses when the Big Sioux floods.

We clean up storm damage not just in our yard, but everyone else’s too.

We cheer way louder than we should at baseball and softball games. And one weekend a year, we get to show off how good of a place Bruce is. We get to show the surrounding area that we are flourishing.

We get to show them how great life can actually be. At the end of the day the sign on the way into town is the best way to describe us. Bruce, a Honey of a Place to be!