The dog days of mid-summer, when the air is hot and heavy and your canine is trying to figure out whether it would be worth it to try to burrow under your house to escape the blazing sun, is not a time when volunteerism is in full flower.

There are exceptions of course, such as the devoted folks who persistently make sure the flowers are watered and trimmed in the Main Street median and the planters scattered throughout the downtown. There are, of course, the Oregon Jamboree volunteers, some of whom have been doing it for years. But the Jamboree is such an event that it would be hard not to get enthusiastic about being part of that – even if your job seems mundane.

It’s the grass-roots efforts that wilt a bit during this time of the year and that’s why I have to congratulate the people who put together that SALEbration last Saturday in the downtown area (see page 11). From what I’ve heard, by all accounts it was a smashing success.

A core group of some six people did the lion’s hare of the organizing and planning for that event. Two of them work here at The New Era, so I may appear biased in congratulating the organizers, but I assure you that I would be just as enthusiastic if I had no idea who did what. (Frankly, half the time I had no idea what they were up to.)

That SALEbration was a shot in the arm for our community. I sat at a rummage sale booth and watched what seemed like a sizeable portion of Sweet Home and folks from other areas walk by and there were a lot of them. Enjoying themselves on a Saturday – even a hot one.

I once lived in San Luis Obispo, Calif., where I went to college and stayed for a while after graduating. It was a pleasant town on the Central Coast, with good beaches only a dozen miles away and lots of great weather to make someone who likes the outdoors happy.

It also had a Farmer’s Market on one of its main drags every Thursday night. Farmers and vendors and (since this was the Central Coast) barbecuers would set up shop there in the streets, with a few performers mixed with some of the inevitable religious and political zealots of various stripes.

When I arrived there (frighteningly close to 30 years ago), the Farmer’s Market was still in its infancy. I don’t know how long it had existed, but it was still undergoing growing pains – cranky merchants who didn’t want to deal with the street getting closed down and perceived threats to their businesses, people who didn’t like not being able to drive on that street, etc. etc.

The market persisted, though, and it’s now a polished, huge affair that stretches for blocks and is known far and wide. People drive for hours just to go to it. Commerce booms, not only in the street but in the shops, which all stay open till 9. They finally figured out that this thing could help them.

I talked the other day to a friend who was stationed for years at Vandenberg Air Force Base, nearly 50 miles away. He told me he went to the SLO Farmer’s Market nearly every Thursday night throughout the summer.

Point is, that Farmer’s Market, maybe more than any of the city’s other charms, has made San Luis Obispo a destination point.

I’m not suggesting, necessarily that something like the SALEbration could do anything like that for Sweet Home. But the kind of vision and planning and effort that made it work is what it will take to create positive changes in a town that has a lot of unrealized potential.

It was great to see crowds of people downtown on a Saturday morning and afternoon, hanging out, buying stuff, enjoying music, eating at the excellent food vending booths – just being a community.

If you didn’t make it this year, I hear they’re already working out the bugs and planning to do it again.

Bigger and better.