Page 38 2015 Lincoln Balloon Festival LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.COM September 1, 2015
The Balloon Festival’s celebrity donkey race scheduled for
Saturday was replaced with a celebrity dunk tank. The
Tank drew area residents young and old to try their luck
at dousing a local personage who had agreed to sit for
30-minute shifts on a hair-trigger dunk seat above icy
water. Five dollars bought a player three tries at hitting
the target and sinking the celebrity volunteer in a short-
distance, but very sudden dive, the youngest players
sometimes getting an “assist” from the dunk tank’s
enthusiastic promoter when they actually hit the target,
but maybe didn’t have the arm strength to trigger the
dunking mechanism.
Saturday featured a
scheduled lineup of eleven
local businesspeople,
aldermen, and artists,
including some familiar
faces from the Logan
County Alliance, with
certain volunteers standing
by to fill in for absences.
Substitutions to the lineup
resulted in volunteers like
local teenager Zak
Luken being conscripted to
sit for shifts as long as 90
minutes in soaked clothes
on the windy airfield.
“It’s warmer in the tank than up here,” Luken joked, while
explaining the “rules” of the dunk tank game to passers-
by, entreating them to buy dunk tank tickets both to
benefit a good cause, and to put him back in the water
and out of the wind.
How did Zak get this exciting job? “My dad is one of
the organizers of the event,” Luken revealed, his teeth
chattering, adding that his dad “hasn’t been dunked…yet.”
After their shifts in the dunk tank and a change into dry
clothes, Zak and other tank volunteers went on to work
other posts on the grounds throughout the event. Despite
the blue lips from the physical hardship, Luken and
other dunk tank volunteers remained in good spirits and
enjoyed the close of activities on Saturday.
Zak himself was spotted hours later working the
admissions gate, a smile on his face, happy to be out
of the “seat of honor” but proud to have had such an
important role in making the Balloon Festival a success.
[Ben McBroom]
Dunk tank tests
volunteers mettle
against wind and wet
