Petaluma celebrates annual Butter and Eggs Day with parade and ag-themed activities

Petaluma's annual Butter & Egg Days celebration went remarkably smoothly, considering that upward of 20,000 people converged on a few square blocks to watch a parade made up of 140 entries, including numerous floats and marching bands.

There are still a few tweaks that could improve the event. The Cutest Little Chick In Town contest, put on by the Petaluma Egg Farm, began at 10:15 a.m. - right around the time many of the competitors were crashing hard for their midmorning naps.

“Oh, we're waking up!” said emcee, Jeff Mayne, as a 2-month old named Brady emerged from a light slumber just in time to start working the judges.

By the time 19-month-old Aurora Roland was declared the winner, she was fast asleep, and remained so throughout a boisterous ovation.

In past years, the parade has drawn as many as 35,000 people, said Mayne, a former president of the Petaluma Downtown Association, which has been producing this cholesterol-intensive event for 38 years. “People fly in from out of state to reconnect with their families and be at this parade,” he said.

The theme of this year's parade, “It's Always Punny In Petaluma,” was a nod to one of Sonoma County's best known businesses. “Clo,” the cartoon bovine who serves as the mascot for Clover Sonoma dairy products, and appears on pun- centric billboards, happened to be turning 50 this year - 2½ times the life expectancy of most milk cows.

That serendipitous anniversary was seized on by the downtown association, whose executive director Marie McCusker declared before the parade, “The more puns, the better.”

(The Press Democrat regards puns as one of the lower forms of wordplay, and chooses not to traffic in them. It's just not happening. There's no whey.)

Among those obliging McCusker were the folks at the Petaluma Arts Center, who rode in an antique car upon whose roof was mounted the life-sized, paper-mache Vincent van Goat, painted in Starry Starry Night blues and yellows.

“Churn Up Your Radio,” urged a sign on the float for KPCA 103.3 FM.

On this day, the Muir on the MuirWoods Memory Care shuttle had been covered with a sign that said “Moo.” Cow horns had been velcroed to each side of the van, near the front.

Not all the puns were dairy based. The elaborate float designed by the Sonoma County Beekeepers Assocation featured an igloo-sized hive - thick, tugboat rope coiled around a chicken wire frame - beside which a sign had been planted: “Air Bee N Bee.”

Colin Caldwell, a teacher at Kenilworth Junior High School, carried a poster proclaiming, “History Teachers: They Always Babylon.”

Caldwell and his family moved to Petaluma 16 years ago, he said. His favorite aspect of the parade is that “it allows everyone to express themselves in their own way.”

Three blocks north, at the corner of Kentucky and D streets, Petaluma Mayor Teresa Barrett voiced a similar sentiment, just before boarding a golf cart festooned with polka dots, balloons and bearing a large, stuffed cow.

“What I love about the parade is that it's about whatever Petaluma feels like it should be about,” Barrett said. “There are no external forces defining this.”

By “external forces,” she was apparently not referring to the two dozen or so Star Wars-themed storm troopers and black-armored TIE pilots who'd just passed by. At one point, a spectator complimented a TIE pilot on his costume, then expressed hope that he wasn't “too hot in there.”

“I'm frikkin' baking,” came the muffled reply.

The festivities had kicked off, as they do every year, in front of McNear's Saloon. Locals Tim and Linda Corbett selflessly collect, dry, then spray-paint cow patties for the annual Cow Chip Throwing Contest. In the “Battle of the Badges,” Fire Department battalion Chief Mike Medeiros won a decisive victory over the town's police chief, Ken Savano, whose overhand delivery generated so much torque that the pattie fractured in his hand.

Medeiros, who grew up on a dairy farm and knows his way around “a bull chip,” as he called them, opted for a sidearm delivery, which proved far more successful.

Neither man came close to matching the longest toss of the day. That belonged to Dan Berger, a civil engineer with a background in ultimate Frisbee, he later divulged. His Herculean toss carried at least 120 feet, sending chip fragments onto nearby B Street and causing one witness to shout “Holy Cow!”

It remained unclear at press time whether the pun was intended.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified the radio station KPCA 103.3 FM.