By FINN HARTNETT

Staff writer

Most out-of-towners waited until evening to show up for Friday’s Fourth Fest in Peabody.

Some arrived as late as 10 p.m.; that was when the fireworks show began, after all.

But the festivities started much earlier than that, and so did many of the more interesting aspects of the day.

By the early afternoon, a smattering of food vendors were setting up generators and fryers in the city park.

Festival emcee Aaron Waddell tested the park’s loudspeakers by cracking jokes to the sparse crowd.

Brian Mosiman already had opened Grab ’N’ Go Hot Dogs for business and served a few locals looking for lunch.

In addition to wieners and a mass of toppings, he sold stir-fry.

Mosiman grew up in Peabody and attended the Fourth Fest frequently as a kid in the ’80s. In the early ’90s, he left his hometown to join the military.

In 2014, started Grab ’N’ Go out of Emporia.

That same year, he visited Jamaica with his wife. Inspired by the island, he began wearing his hair in dreadlocks.

“It’s more about their way of thought and philosophy than anything,” Mosiman said.

Mosiman continues to attend Fourth Fest on and off. He has brought his hot dog stand six separate times.

“It’s good for business, and I like coming out here,” he said. “I could do without the wind today. But it’s not too hot.”

Cars puttered around town, most with American flags strapped to them.

Local schoolboys manned dirt bikes, popping wheelies and racing down Walnut St.

Three of them took a break from racing to grab ice cream outside Southside Creamery and Deli.

The adolescent excitement and energy was palpable.

“My dad never lets me ride it, but it’s the Fourth,” one boy said of his bike.

Another boy arrived in a wiry blue go-cart.

It resembled a shopping cart and seemed to be the most undesirable ride.

“Do you want it?” the boy asked seriously. “I’ve flipped it three different times.”

A block away, Peabody Historical Society sponsored its 6th annual ice cream social from 2 to 4 p.m.

Board members donned T-shirts identifying them as part of the “apple dumpling gang,” and big band music hummed from inside the courtyard.

Susan Mayo, Steve Hanneman, and 102-year old Bob Delk were the performers. Midday heat was eased by their music as much as the shade and wind rustling through the trees.

Patty Traxson explained that the money raised for the historical society this year would go toward making its building’s outhouse handicapped-accessible.

“We’ve had music before,” Traxon said. “Usually that draws quite a crowd in.”

A caricature booth, “Drawn Crazy,” was a new addition.

The gathering was livened up by the arrival of Marsha Sebree, who came dressed in elaborate colonial attire and gave a monologue as Helen Lyons Cooper, a young woman who migrated to the Peabody area in the late 19th century.

“When we came, we came by stagecoach,” Sebree said. “1871, April. The train would only go as far as Council Grove.

“In 1865, we quit using whalebones for our corsets because we had to tighten them so tight they were breaking,” she said. “We switched to steel. If you could get the smallest pair of shoes on, it was nicer if your feet were tiny. … The things we did to be on the up and up!”

Emil and Greta Wortman, listening intently, had come to Fourth Fest from Bremen, Germany.

The closest thing to Independence Day in Germany, they explained, is an Oct. 3 holiday that celebrates the reunification of East and West Germany.

The Wortmans were introduced to Peabody after their brother attended Peabody-Burns schools for an exchange program.

“It’s cute,” Greta said of the town.

Though they’d visited Peabody once before, this was their first Fourth Fest.

“It’s already a lot of fun,” Emil said.