The parade, which travels down Madera Avenue (“main street”), comes right out of a page from an American heartland scrapbook.  Truly a part of Americana: with local high school marching bands, VFW, police and fire department, community leaders and politicians, civic clubs, businesses, schools, old tractors, bales of hay, cowboys and cowgirls riding their horses, . . . and of course . . . the guy with the shovel and wheelbarrow walking behind the horses.  It is all very quaint, very “hometown.”  If you spend any amount of time living in Kerman, you will probably, at some point in your life, be in this parade.  You’ll walk or ride a float down main street, waving to the crowd that lines the road.  And undoubtedly you will see a dozen or more people who know you, and you wave furiously back at them when they call out your name and wave to you.  This is what the Harvest Festival is all about. 

When I was a little boy growing up in Kerman, I thought the Harvest Festival was really cool.  I could ride the attractions at the carnival with my friends, spending the whole afternoon just having fun!  The parade was exciting and my parents made sure to point out to me all the subtle nuances of the farm equipment and other floats that passed down the street.  Each year I looked forward to it.  But once I became a young adult, I thought it was hokey, “small-townish.”  And I lost interest.  Now that I am, shall I say, not such a young adult and have shown my own child the Harvest Festival, I see it for what it really is: a celebration of community and friendship.  It is one of the things that makes Kerman special. 

-Scott Toste