What a fabulous four day home stand Big Red had for the Potomac Nationals 4th of July celebration.  Not only did several records fall, we destroyed them. [caption id="attachment_270" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Early Crowd on the 4th"] [/caption] It all started on Thursday.  Keep in mind, I've been working mid-week games by myself.  So, I arrived early after stopping in Richmond to pick up supplies and had to do a full set up since we'd used all of my equipment at the Indy Car Races at RIR the week before. The P Nats folks weren't expecting much of a crowd, neither was I. I thought I would be going thru the motions, cover my expenses and wait for Friday and Saturday which I knew would be big. Wrong. I got slammed on Thursday night with a much bigger crowd than expected plus it was a spending crowd.  I had trouble keeping up with both funnel cakes and lemonade, so much so I'm rethinking my working games by myself.  Great start to the home stand. Friday, Peggy and I were ready.  Plenty of lemonade was squeezed in advance.  I made up 5 gallons of batter and still thought I could get by with only one fryer thinking it would be like previous Friday games. Wrong, again. Peggy was out of lemonade before the first inning.  I used up my batter by about the same time and we spent the rest of the game scrambling to keep up with both even with getting the second fyer going. At the end of the night, we'd set a new single game ball game record surpassing all of my good football games at Liberty, JMU and VMI.  The only game record to stand was the state high school football championships at Liberty two years ago, and that was two games, not one. Peggy and I have done something like 1,000 events together and have always had a natural chemistry in working together.  If one of us needed something, the other had already anticipated it, and accomplised it.  That is the main reason that the two of us have been able to handle some huge crowds while other vendors would need three or four people to do the same volume. Friday wasn't one of those nights.  Everything we did was wrong.  We kept bumping into each other and getting in each others way.  By the end of the night, we were literally ready to kill each other. And, that is a first, too. During the drive home, we figured out how to fix the problems for Saturday, changing our set up some and adding a fourth person.  (We'd planned on three). On Saturday, Chuck, who has worked for us a couple of times in the past, and his wife, Ryan, basically handled the lemonade.  Peggy managed the register and serving folks.  I mixed 25 gallons of batter (which still wasn't enough)and did most of the cooking until later in the evening when almost everyone in line wanted funnel cakes.  Chuck jumped over and helped me then, cooking some, mixing batter and keeping my pitchers full.  We almost doubled our sales from Friday, only it was much smoother, just like I like it. [caption id="attachment_271" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Slapshot, the Washington Capitals mascot, Was a Visiting Dignitary on Sunday"] [/caption] Yes, we had outrageous lines.   Would you believe from our stand out front in the food court, the line went inside the stadium and all the way down to the Bar-B-Que stand at third base.  It stayed that way all night and into the fireworks display. In the end, the only days bigger have been at the races.  The old ball game record (from the state chamionships) was passed by over $250. Sunday, there was a shower right at gates open time and that killed the crowd.  Even though the game was played, it was a lousy game for us, but quite frankly, we didn't care as neither Peggy nor I had any energy left from Friday and Saturday. The old adage, "Baseball be very, very good to me," is certainly true.  Thanks, Father Guido.