St. Patrick Parish Picnic Offers More Than Picnic Food

The ninth annual Picnic will offer much more than picnic food, including live musical entertainment, carnival rides, games of chance and a car show, when the parish welcomes the community today and Saturday at the church, 405 South Church St. in Wentzville.

"I’m confident we’ve put together a very good product," said church member Dan Stahl, who co-chairs the event with Mark Niehaus. "It’s an annual process of making it bigger and better."

Stahl and Niehaus both grew up in North County, where parish picnics were a big deal.

"That’s what we wanted to get back to--the good, old-fashioned parish picnic," Stahl said. "Where you can bring your family, the kids can go have a blast, the adults can enjoy some great entertainment, play some games of chance. You know, we say parish picnic, but it’s open to anyone in the area who wants to come out and have fun. It’s one of those things where you go back in your mind’s eye and remember all the good times you had at your parish picnic growing up, and we wanted to bring that to St. Patrick’s, and really the St. Charles area, whoever wants to come out and enjoy that."

The picnic, which will benefit tuckpointing projects at the church and its affiliated school, runs 5-10 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday. Music 6-10 p.m. tonight will be classic rock from the Sacred Heart Stones, made up of members and the priest from Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Troy.

"They’re very good," Stahl said.

Stahl said the group, which raises money for the St. Vincent De Paul Society, sounds as good as a professional group.

"Two years ago when they played, they were scheduled to end at 10, and we did a collection and raised an additional, I think it was $300, to keep them playing," Stahl said. "So the crowd was very much into what they were doing."

Providing something for other musical tastes, the Lodge Brothers play bluegrass and country 3-6 p.m. Saturday.

"They’re really good," Stahl said. "The crowd was very much into them as well."

St. Patrick Church member Mary Collins will play guitar and sing folk originals 1-3 p.m. Saturday, and The Fog, a band from St. Paul Catholic Church in O’Fallon, plays classic rock and country rock 7-10 p.m.

"We try to mix it up a little bit," Stahl said of the musical styles. "We try to keep some live entertainment going other than the sound of the rides."

The rides, available both days, include aptly named The Scrambler, which has three arms and three seats and spins riders in a circle while also jumping back and forth; The Roundup, on which riders are pinned to the wall of a spinning tubular structure by centrifugal force; a Giant Slide with four lanes and potato sacks to ride on; a Fun House featuring slanted walkways and distorted mirrors; kiddie rides including small cars and a mini-Ferris wheel; and the out of this world Spaceship 2000.

"You go inside, and it looks like a spaceship," Stahl said. "That’s the one you have to be careful of after a big lunch."

Ride tickets are $1.25 each. It takes three tickets for Spaceship 2000, two tickets for most of the other rides and one ticket for the kiddie rides.

Numerous games of chance will also be offered. Friday night has Texas Hold ‘Em, the spinning-wheel game Chuck-a-Luck and Nickel Pitch, where people can win folding money by landing a tossed nickel on the face of the president pictured on the bill. On Saturday, the chances to win increase with traditional games like milk can toss, where participants try to knock over milk cans by throwing a ball; a golf putting game; target shooting; duck pond, where people pluck ducks out of the water to find the designated prize underneath the duck; and Crazy Driver, where the object is to use two metal rods to guide a ball into a hole.

One of the games, Speed Pitch, allows hurlers to throw three pitches past a radar gun. If they successfully predict the speed of the third throw, they win a prize. Everyone who pays the $1 for three throws is also entered into a raffle to win two sets of St. Louis Cardinals tickets and one set of River City Rascals tickets.

Other Saturday attractions include a car show with a $10 entry for the car owners and a washers tournament, which is $25 per team. The car show winners--determined by voting from fairgoers--receive trophies. The washer tournament is a 50-50--the church gets half, and first and second place split the other half, with first getting 75 percent.

The tastiest game of chance is certainly the Cake Walk, a culinary version of musical chairs. Numbered circles are drawn on the ground, and music starts playing. When the music stops, participants jump on circles. The person standing on the number that corresponds to the number of a cake drawn from a selection of numbers takes the cake. It’s a popular game from many perspectives.

"We fill up one of the rectory offices with cakes," Stahl said. "That’s gotta be 75 cakes at least. It’s a hit with my 8-year-old (daughter). She spends nearly half her day at the cake walk, which is crazy, because we’ve got all these rides. She got the sweet tooth from me."

There are other fundraisers, including the Wagon of Cheer. A $1 raffle ticket buys the chance to win the wagon, which is "full of every kind of adult beverage you can imagine," Stahl said.

Folks with deeper pockets can try for a richer payout with the Mega Cash Raffle. A maximum of 1,000 $50 tickets will be sold for a chance to win a $20,000 first prize. An additional $5,000 in cash will be split with $2,000 for second, $1,000 for third, $500 for fourth and fifth, $250 for sixth and seventh and $100 for eighth through twelfth. The winner will be announced at the end of the picnic Saturday night. As of Monday, nearly 500 tickets had already been sold, and Stahl expected to see additional sales through Saturday.

"The break even point is 500 tickets," he said. "Anything north of that goes to the church."

It wouldn’t be a picnic without food, including hot dogs, bratwurst, hamburgers, pulled pork sandwiches, Imo’s pizza by the slice and chicken wings and gizzards. Fairgoers can quench their thirst with soda, water, iced tea, beer, margaritas and daiquiris. On Saturday, a chicken dinner featuring chicken, potatoes, coleslaw, bread and a drink will be available for $10.

Golf cart shuttles will be available for those in need. There is plenty of free parking.