Dam fine conclusion

 Whew, take a deep breath Chickasaw County, the parties are over and you survived “Festival Month.”From Alta Vista to Fredericksburg to New Hampton to Lawler to Nashua, we had ourselves quite a month, with the final installment Water Over the Dam Days this past weekend.“It’s one of those months when you can tell people that say ‘there’s nothing going on around here’ that they’re dead wrong,” Chickasaw County Tourism Director Jason Speltz said earlier this summer. “It works because they all have their own character, if you know what I mean.”And while Mother Nature gave Water Over the Dam Days a challenge — it was downright steamy both Friday and Saturday and a storm moved through the area late Saturday night — the five-day festival was another great success.“Couldn’t be happier,” said Kim Walk, who has helped coordinate’s Nashua celebration for the past 10 years. “We had great turnouts for a lot of things, and to see [Cedar View] Park today shows you people love Water Over the Dam Days.”Speltz earlier this month, Walk at the end of the month and lots of folks in between say there are a lot of reasons festivals like Alta Vista Days, Dairy Days, Heartland Days, Irish Fest and Water Over the Dam Days are so successful.“A lot of it is community pride, which brings out the people,” Speltz said, “but at the same time, the only reasons these things work is because of donations and volunteers. Without them, we’d just be a bunch of people talking in a park.”Walk agreed.“By the time it’s all over, we’re writing checks for $40,000,” she said. “If we don’t have donors, if we don’t have people coming to the Mud Run and donors stepping up, we can’t offer what we offer.”Fellow Water Over the Dam Days Coordinator Tori Ulrichs echoed Walk.“We can’t do this without the monetary donations from private people and area businesses,” she said. “They are the unsung heroes.”In the end, though, Ulrichs said it all comes down to community pride.Sure, it was hot on Saturday after the morning parade, yet the park was full for much of the afternoon and evening.“It’s almost like we have that attitude that we’re going no matter what,” she said, “because this is our town, this is our festival and we’re pretty proud of it.”