'Round the Town: 21st Century version

This 'Round the Town column is a throwback to Free Press days of old. Back in the '70s it used to be a column just to let readers know what's happening "around the town."

The entries from Aug. 2, 1971 included "card club at the senior center, Katoans Book Club and Neurotics Anonymous at St. John's Episcopal Church."

About 40 years later we've got a few more things going for us.

With a nod to old traditions that may be good enough to resurrect, albeit through blogs, Facebook and Twitter, I'll give it a shot.

The Vikings are back in town, and that means about $5 million to the Mankato economy, according to the folks at the Greater Mankato Convention and Visitor's Bureau.

And Ribfest this weekend can't hurt the crowds as travelers could get a two-for on the Kato excursion. Here's our Ribfest preview story.

Ribfest held this year for the second time at Riverfront Park is expected to draw better and includes at least one more ribber than last year for a total of five, possibly more.

They've also nailed down three pretty impressive headline music acts with country act Tracy Lawrence, (Country always draws big) bluesy Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Little River Band, a longtime pop group with plenty of hits.

So the beer should be flowing and the ribs sizzling this weekend. Temperature are even supposed to be reasonable in the 80s.

More and more when I hear people who haven't been to Mankato in a while say what a great looking city is it. I'm going to say we're challenging Red Wing for the volume of green spaces we have in our city center.

The sculpture walk makes it even more attractive.

At a recent Mankato Moondogs game, I met a financial advisor from California who was on his way to a convention in Minneapolis, but enjoyed stopping at amateur ballparks around the country.

He said Mankato's Franklin Rogers Park was a real "nice ballyard."

Good to hear that term again. "Ball-yard"

Of course, Franklin Rogers was the editor of "Mankato Free Press" in 1971, and wrote a daily column called "Between Us" where he answered reader complaints, spoke of parking tickets and news of the day.

We'll maybe tackle that one another day.