A day to feel good about

Community turns out for annual Rathdrum Days celebration

RATHDRUM — If you play it, the people will come.

And with music playing all day on a stage near Lakeland High on Saturday, they came out.

For Danny Knox of Athol, it was a chance to step on stage for the first time during the annual event, which featured food booths, dunk tanks and inflatable toys for children.

“I started playing music when I was 13,” Knox said. “I’m pretty much self taught. I played pretty much through high school growing up. These days, I’ll play at church during worship at our church — Victory World Outreach in Rathdrum.”

During the day, Knox works as a welder/fabricator.

“I work four 10s during the week, so I don’t get a lot of time during the week to play,” Knox said. “I’ll usually play a little bit on the weekends.”

Knox was one of six performers scheduled to perform during the city’s annual celebration on the campus of Lakeland High. Organizers had to cancel the annual parade and watermelon-eating contest due to COVID-19 concerns, but that didn’t stop them from celebrating — at a safe distance.

“It’s an annual event and used to encompass three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), but has been a two-day event for years,” said Tim Skubitz, who serves on the Rathdrum Chamber of Commerce board of directors. “The biggest thing we had to work on was how to shrink it down and make it manageable. It’s important to the community that we’re still here, and that’s the motto, to put the ‘unity’ in ‘community.’ It was challenging in some aspects, but we’re keeping sanitizing and social distance practices to help with the pandemic, but still exercising people’s freedom to get out and mingle.”

The pandemic also caused the North Idaho’s Strongest Competition, Doggie Dash and Friday Night Beer Garden and Dance to be canceled. The Chamber added in a release those events will return in 2021.

To Knox, it just felt good to get on stage.

“I like the way music makes me feel,” Knox said. “I have a sense of freedom that I don’t get to experience a lot. Sometimes, it’s an escape for me to get away from the things that are going on in the world. Spiritually, it’s just a chance to be alone in my thoughts.”

For Wayne Cardwell of Rathdrum, it was a chance to perform with the Albeni Falls Pipes and Drums band.

“I had a few friends here playing and it seemed interesting to me,” said Cardwell, who played the drums and also performed a fiddle solo. “It seemed like a good thing to do. A lot of people that play the fiddle seem wholesome and nice.”

The Pipes and Drums band, which Cardwell joined in the last six months, is comprised of musicians of all ages from Hayden, Spirit Lake, Athol and Rathdrum.

“They’re all friendly people,” Cardwell said. “And that’s the most important thing to me.”

And while Knox hasn’t done many live performances, he still realizes how special they can be.

“It’s really important, especially to give honor to those that protect our community,” Knox said. “It’s important to bring that together. The views of what’s going on in the world right now, it’s divided. Music can really bring everyone together.”

Something Skubitz agrees with.

“It’s fun to see the community, watching the different families come out with their kids,” said Skubitz, who also sponsors the annual Big Wheel races during Rathdrum Days. “It’s great to have things for the family to do together. We’re a little limited this year, and usually do some other things that are a little more social, but those had to be curtailed. But it’s still great to see everyone come out for this.”