I found out that we also came in last in the bucket brigade. The final “official” event is the jousting, which is really more like a tug of war in the air. Valley Lumber provides two forklifts, and a beer keg is suspended from a wire strung between them. Then two companies try to push the keg by aiming a stream of water at it. Sounds easy enough, except that the keg usually starts swinging wildy from side to side. Some battles ended up being pretty evenly matched and lasted quite awhile, which is really hard on the guys holding the nozzle for each team. We won our first match, but lost our second, so we ended up in second place in this event. In the picture, I am holding the hose on the far left.

We then fulfilled our obligation of cooking lunch, and after lunch was over there was one more event, which consisted of the whole department and various wives and others marching single file down the middle of Brown street, looping around the manhole cover, then continuing down Main Street, doing another loop, and then proceeding into the Palace for a round of drinks. This basic procedure is then repeated for rounds at the Ivanhoe, followed by Curley’s. It all had a certain Monty Python feel to it, even when you weren’t drinking.