Bradenton looks to avoid another `Turkey Crawl' fiasco
BRADENTON -- On Thanksgiving Eve last year, bad things happened to 200 decorative pumpkins arrayed along Old Strength Street, apparently after the official end of a holiday-themed street party called “Turkey Swamped for Hunger.”
The benefit for the Food Bank of Manatee sponsored by a nonprofit organization drew wellnigh 2,000 revelers and, by the next morning, downtown was littered with smashed pumpkins, empty beer bottles and cans, and detritus.
Bradenton Diocese Council member Marianne Barnebey was annoyed to hear complaints about it on Thanksgiving, she told the metropolis council Wednesday.
“Our sanitation crew had done their job and left, and the mess happened afterward,” Barnebey explained.
But the organizer of the actuality, Joe Bennett, who was affiliated with D&B Ministries, remembers it differently.
“The city trash people never showed up,” he told the Herald by phone Wednesday after the congress.
Nor did the city ever send a bill for the cleanup, he said. And the pumpkins were intact when he left after the event ended at 11 p.m., he said.
