This year marks the 75th anniversary of what’s known as the Pancake Day Race in the southwest Kansas town of Liberal. It’s an oddity, but these types of community festivals offer economic and less tangible benefits to smaller towns. Women dressed in aprons, skirts and headscarves line up in the middle of main street. They’re dressed in a traditional English kitchen outfit, but instead of cooking they are about to race. As the women get on their marks they prepare their other race essentials, frying pans and pancakes. This is the annual Pancake Day Race, a tradition in Liberal, Kansas, for 75 years. People gather to watch competitors run the quarter-mile race holding frying pans containing a single pancake. It’s a multi-day event in Liberal with an international connection as locals compete against racers in England. While events like this held in many smaller towns may seem like curiosities, they can offer economic and social benefits that motivate communities to keep them alive. “We’re smack dab in the middle of nowhere, and in a small sense, we’re connected internationally,” said Gary Classen, who has been chairman of Pancake Day for eight years.
Source: Dodge City Daily Globe
