Swords, fire and eggs: Live entertainment and community activities at the center of Houston Founder’s Day activities

HOUSTON — The fireworks were called off due to wildfires during the annual Houston Founders Day event on Saturday but that didn’t stop the community from celebrating with each other. Live music and entertainment, games, and free hot dogs were still amply available and fully utilized by attendees.

The traditional entertainment circle in front of the Houston Fire Department offers a variety of spectacles like the swash buckling knights from the Society for Creative Anachronism. The circle also engages the crowd with annual, participation driven events like the egg toss and cake walk.

Cutter Jones and his teammate Dalian Rindlisbacher each won $50 at the annual egg toss event. The egg toss was outside the circle this year but the cake walk still utilized it.

Jones said there’s a technique needed to win the egg toss. Like most contestants, Jones and Rindlisbacher pivoted and folded their bodies based on the direction of the egg, trajectorially attempting to move in unison.

“You gotta’ go with the egg,” Jones said.

The 15-year-old boys are close cousins with a synergetic flow, which ultimately aided their excellent egg victory.

“I mean 50 bucks is pretty nice… I feel good. It was fun” Rindlisbacher said.

The Alaska Fire Circus returned to Houston Founders Day for their second year at the event. Founding member Roger Reoh said that in spite of being based out of Anchorage, the Founders Day event feels very “homey.”

“We’d love to be a regular staple,” Reoh said.

Reoh said that performing with fire means a lot to him as a positive force in his life and that’s why he wanted to share his passion with others.

“Fire brought me a lot of self-confidence… I wanted to bring other people on board with that” Reoh said.

Reoh said that he grew up as a “renaissance kid” working at renaissance fairs. He was inspired by jugglers at a young age. Now he juggles fire along with other passionate pyrokinetic performers. He said he felt at home taking turns with the SCA to perform within the circle.

“That’s my roots,” Reoh said.

The SCA is an international living history group with more than 200 members across the state of Alaska, all with the intent to study and recreating mostly Medieval European cultures and their histories before the 17th century.

Members pick times and locations then research and gather materials to reenact their time period of choice. The armored fighting is just the tip of the iceberg and the anachronistic community engages in various activities like woodworking, blacksmithing, and pottery throughout the year.

Gretchen Thompson is the local group president for SCA in the Valley. She said that she’s been involved with SCA since she was 13 years old.

“It’s a wonderful place to raise your family. You learn the history and the old way of doing things,” Thompson said.

The SCA came to Alaska in 1979, 12 years after its inception, according to Thompson. The Alaskan SCA has been a reoccurring staple of Founders Day for the last 17 years.

“We feel really welcome here… Founders day, this is huge for us. It’s the only time the whole community comes out. This is our big to-do,” Thompson said.

Thompson proudly reported that she’s a Houston resident and lives off of King Arthur Drive, feeling like she manifested her own medieval destiny in unison with the community and SCA.

“We love living in Houston,” Thompson said.

As armored knights clashed their wooden swords and shields living out their historical fantasies, very real flames burned in the distance. Amid Founders Day festivities, first responders rushed past on the Parks Highway. That’s why the fireworks were cancelled.

The McKinley and Deshka fires were forcing wave after wave of evacuees from their homes and Thompson took a moment to acknowledge the disheartening situation for their “friends up the road.”

“Our thoughts are going out to them,” Thompson said.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com