Wright City was abuzz as the city held a flurry of events Saturday, Oct. 5. 

First was the Wright City Fire Protection District’s pancake breakfast, offering attendees a quick stop to fill up on calories before the day’s festivities. 

Next was the Strassenbash parade, which saw attendees lining W.N. Second Street as floats, fire trucks and the Wright City High School Marching Band traveled the length of the street from downtown to Diekroeger Park, where they met up with the rest of the annual festival’s offerings. 

Children exclaimed with delight as representatives from the fire district, Wright City Board of Aldermen and local scout troops spread candy across the street. 

The festival itself was also seen as a success, even though it was somewhat decreased in scope compared to previous years. 

Strassenbash was originally started in Wright City in 1985 to celebrate the construction of the highway overpass in downtown Wright City at exit 200 on Interstate 70, according to Mayor Michelle Heiliger. 

Since then it has continued as a community event for the past 39 years.

In those 39 years it has taken many forms, originally, it was more of a block party and took place more centrally in the streets of downtown Wright City, but the bulk of the events have since been moved to the nearby Diekroeger Park. 

This year was also the first in some time the event had been shortened to one day. In previous years the festivities began on Friday evening and continued long into Saturday, but Heiliger said that the burden of a two-day festival had become too much for the event’s limited volunteers. 

They decided instead to focus their efforts on improving the experience on Saturday, when the weekend would allow attendees more time to enjoy the festival’s events. 

As festival goers followed the parade into Diekroeger Park they were greeted with a wide variety of vendors and games from a bounce house to even a rock climbing wall. 

“It looks like we got a lot more vendors this year,” remarked Alderman Don Andrews. 

Attendees were also treated to live music from Mickey and Michael Scott, Dawgs in the Smokehouse and the Big Rigs Band. 

Although the event does serve as an opportunity for vendors to sell their wares, Alderman Ramiz Hakim and Heiliger wanted to focus more on the event’s importance to the community. 

“These are the events that make a community a community,” said Hakim. 

Heiliger was also proud that the vast majority of the events at Strassenbash were free, and that even if families did not want to spend money at any of the various food trucks and booths they were welcome to bring their own picnic. 

“We love this event because we recognize we have a number of fragile families,” said Heiliger. “And this is something everyone can afford.”

She was proud that they were able to bring the community together like this and hoped that it would continue for years to come.