Don't tempt me with a good time | 13 years of beers: A column in verse, with apologies to sobriety

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Katie Grant and Stella Winter enjoy adult beverages in the Blossom and Brews beer garden at the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival in Memorial Park on Thursday, April 23, 2026, in Wenatchee.

There are two kinds of citizens in Wenatchee during the Apple Blossom:

those in the parade,

and those explaining why they used to be in the parade.

Both eventually drift, as rivers do,

toward Memorial Park, where the beer garden has stood for 13 years

like a civic cathedral of taps and reunion.

Not a church exactly, too honest for that,

but a place where confessions arrive in plastic cups.

Thirteen years of beers.

A noble age.

Old enough to have history,

young enough to still text after midnight.

Here under spring lights and the benevolent racket of the stage,

one meets classmates who once swore they'd leave town forever

and now own three rental properties and a smoker trailer.

One meets former quarterbacks with careful knees.

One meets a woman who sold you raffle tickets in 2009

and still remembers your mother's casserole scandal.

The beer garden is less a venue than a census.

You do not attend it.

You are counted by it.

Somewhere nearby, the food fair plumes a signature perfume.

The funnel cakes powder the air with amnesia.

The blossoms themselves perform unpaid labor overhead.

And inside the fence, local mythology ferments.

There is always a table of orchardists discussing weather

as if they invented it.

There is always a man saying, "I'm only having one,"

with the solemn confidence of failed empires.

There is always someone dancing

with the courageous rhythm of a person

who has stopped negotiating with shame.

And presiding over this annual republic of merriment:

Alex Haley,

chief steward, keeper of order,

patron saint of wristbands, taps, timing, logistics,

and the subtle diplomacy required

when two cousins discover they are both right about that thing that happened in 1997.

To run a beer garden in Festival week

is to govern a tiny, jubilant nation.

Borders must be respected.

Supplies must move.

Music must continue.

No one must be allowed to say "You know, this town needs new banners"

without supervision.

So raise a plastic chalice to Year 13.

To the laughter that starts too loud.

To the stories that improve with each retelling.

Where everybody is a friend, old, new

and undecided

Raise one also to this valley,

which every spring remembers how to be itself:

a little sentimental, a little vain,

suspicious of outsiders until they compliment the scenery,

and impossibly fond of gathering in public

to celebrate flowers, weather, and each other.

Every town has landmarks of stone.

We, more wisely, have landmarks of habit.

And among them, gloriously foaming,

stands the Blossom and Brews beer garden.

Remaining 2026 Beer Garden times:

Monday-Thursday: 4 p.m. to end of music

Friday-Sunday: 12 p.m. to end of music

Runs through Sunday, May 3 in Memorial Park.

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