Herndon's celebration

Lon Sowers of Gem reins his oxen team down Main Street in Herndon Saturday morning, in the parade celebrating Herndon's annual Ox Roast Days and commemorating the 125th anniversary of the founding of the community. Hundreds of residents and visitors lined the streets of downtown Herndon to watch 133 parade entries -- tractors, oxen, tractors, motorcycles, floats, clowns, tractors and tractors. Even more gathered for the traditional "ox roast" -- actually roast beef -- in the park after the parade. Sowers said the ox on his left is "Gabriel the Golden" -- "Gabe" for short -- and is called the "near ox," because it is traditionally beside that ox that the ox driver walks. "Eric the Red" -- "Rick" for short -- is on Sowers' right, in the position called the "off ox." The oxen are seven years old, and have appeared in activities at the Cheyenne Frontier Days and on Tokyo television following that celebration, at the annual Miles City, Mont., bucking horse sale and at the yearly Bird City steam engine and thresher show. Sowers said he plans to break a pair of white yearling oxen this fall, and will now have "a spare team."