Tag: Egg Scramble

Lamar’s Sesquicentennial Celebration

The Portly Politico11 Comments

My little adopted hometown of Lamar turns 150-years old this year, and we’re celebrating!  The town is planning a full slate of events over the next nine months, kicking off with the return of the famous Egg Scramble Jamboree and a community worship service the first weekend in April.  The Egg Scramble usually lasts the entire weekend, but as it’s the first since The Age of The Virus, the committee behind the event is doing a one-day event, dubbed “The Egg Scramble: Over Easy.”

That cracks me up every time.

Longtime readers know that I love festivals and small-town boosterism.  It’s no surprise, then, that I am super excited for all of these events.

Read More »

Egg Scramble Scrambled

The Portly Politico15 Comments

This weekend my adopted hometown of Lamar, South Carolina (home of that great, racist, yellow peril, pollen) hosted the annual Egg Scramble Jamboree. It’s a festival that attracts around 7000 people to the town, increasing its population by about 700% for a day or two.

The festival is an opportunity to celebrate spring—it includes a lawn judging competition, which is the most American, Hank Hillian kind of small town contest—and to generate some tourism dollars.

It’s unfortunate, then, that the Scramble cracked up last night due to a fight.

I was out of town for the Egg Scramble, but I wanted to see if there was any news about it this morning. That was not the headline I was expecting.

Perhaps I’m indulging in a bit of mountain-from-mole-hill building, but it seems like more and more disruptive outbursts are occurring in the public square these days. According to the news item linked above, this fight marks the first time law enforcement had to shut down the festival since its inception in 1983.

What led up to that fight? Was there a general atmosphere of mob-ishness that led Darlington County sheriff’s deputies busting up the festivities? Was the “fight” a general brawl? How did an isolated kerfuffle lead to the drastic decision to shut down the entire event?

In our current age of litigiousness and excessive concern for safety, it would make sense to send festival-goers home: avoid any lawsuits from personal injury vampires. It seems, too, that authorities would be concerned about a donnybrook devolving into an all-out brawl.

Regardless, it’s a shame how a handful of hooligans can disrupt everyone’s good time. That’s the price of petty crime and social disruption: a major economic stimulus and good, clean fun are destroyed because some people can’t keep their composure at an egg-themed community event.