W ELCOM E
Fifty Years of Fabulous Floats
The Colony Days Parade is right around the corner, and it's taking place on Saturday, Oct. 5, with all the regular fanfare you'd come to expect. This year, the streets will be filled with parade entries celebrating "Fifty Years of Fabulous Floats," which is this year's theme. While
last year celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Colony Days as a whole, this year will honor the parade itself as people drive, walk, and ride on floats through the streets of the town they love so much, Atascadero!
Riding in and residing over the parade this year will be the 2024 Grand Marshal Karen Mc -
Namara and the 2024 Colony Days King and Queen Don and Janey Giessinger. They were first officially in Atascadero News on Sept. 19 and then announced in public to the residents who were invited to the Quota of Atascadero Tea. The tea took place on Sept. 29. All three were also given commemora-
Schedule
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5
9 to 11 a.m. | Breakfast at Huckleberry's at Tent City
tive plaques at the Colony Days mixer, which took place on Oct. 2 in the main lobby of Colony Theatres, when they were inducted into Colony Days' beautiful history. The event was open to all.
On top of all the parade fun, after a triumphant return last year, Tent City will be
back again. Atascadero residents will be able to enjoy diving into a world of historical incite as the city of tents takes them back into what it was like to live in Atascadero when it was starting out as a colony. Expect fun, adventure, and some good old laughs as you trod through Sunken Gardens and are taken back in time.
And don't forget the annual Colony Days dog costume contest, which always brings the community lots of smiles. The small and wiener dog races follow shortly after, and every year, they bring out the competitiveness of everyone's favorite fourlegged friends. Make sure to come out and celebrate with our vibrant community. Say hello to some strangers, make new friends, and remind the old ones why it's so great living here in Atascadero!
After parade to 3 p.m. | There will be a variety of vendors, entertainment, and food in and around the Sunken Gardens, including Atascadero Tent City with a new diner run by Huckleberry's-Atascadero, serving breakfast, lunch, and beignets all day!
10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. | Sign-ups open for Colony Days Dog Races.
11:30 a.m. | Sign-ups open for Colony Days Dog Costume Contest 12 p.m. | Dog costume contest (any size dog-free)
12:30 p.m. | Wiener dog and small dog races (registration form)
1 p.m. | Colony Days Parade awards
Colony Days Grand Marshal Karen McNamara
The Colony Days Committee has picked one of their recent own as the 2024 Grand Marshal by choosing Karen McNamara to fill the role.
"It just is an honor," Karen said of getting selected to preside over the event. "Typically at Colony Days, I was somewhere, running the whole day between things, moving things, making sure everything was put into place."
Last year, Karen stepped down from being co-chair and president of the Colony Days Committee after being involved in many different roles with the nonprofit since 2010. She officially stepped aside from working with Colony Days this year because her role as president at her other passion project, The Atascadero Printery, has started to move forward with larger parts of its construction and revitalization.
"Colony Days is so much fun, and it's such a neat event, and it's such a great thing to hold the community together. It was just an honor to be a part of it and all the great people that I worked with and helped put it on," added Karen. "It's nice to still be a part of it this year and promote the community awareness and the community spirit of Atascadero."
what a special place it was, on top of the great weather. Though they loved California, the family moved to Colorado for a little while but moved back to Atascadero in around 2009. It was then that Karen dived into finding ways to get involved with the community.
dren, Jaime, April, Bryan, and Kody, before his unexpected death in 2015. Her sons are still local, while her daughters have moved to Alaska and Idaho.
So what brought Karen, a Nebraska native, to Atascadero? It was when she met her late husband, Mike, at college in Missouri. "We got married in 1979, and he was an Atascadero native. Almost born here, came here when he was less than a year old, but he grew up here. So we moved here to California. I remember him asking me, 'Would you like to marry me and move to California?'" added Karen with a laugh. When they moved back here, Karen worked at McNamara Electric, which Mike's dad owned. There, she met so many people from the community and realized
"When I came back, I decided to get involved," she said. "The parade was very, very small, and we had lived in a very small town in Colorado. They had an amazing couple of parades every year. They had a Christmas parade and then another parade celebrating the community during the middle of the year. They had great parades, and my sons were like, 'This is such a small parade but such a bigger town.' So I said, well, I'm not going to complain about it. I will just get on [the Colony Days Committee] and help."
Karen and Mike had four amazing chil-
"My kids are amazing. They are just fabulous, and I can't say enough about them. I want to be here for another 30 years for them," Karen said.
It was at the request of her kids that she took over what is now The Atascadero Printery Foundation after Mike's passing. Colony Days actually had a big hand in getting the second non-profit off the ground.
"The Printery was initially my husband, who was doing that. I wasn't super involved. We talked about it some, but it was kind of like, 'Oh, that's Mike's thing,'" Karen said. "I didn't go to those first few meetings that he had. We talked about it, and I helped him gather information about it and things like that. It wasn't that I wasn't
interested at all, but it was kind of his project. He got it going, and he was meeting with people, and then, of course, he passed away. So then in 2015 at Colony Days, as one of my duties for the day, the night before, I made a banner."
That banner said, "Save the Printery." Karen told Kent Kenny of Colony Days that she was going to be making the banner, and he offered to make a photo book with info on the history of the building. The photos featured everything about the Printery that people would want to know. They also made a signup sheet for anyone interested in helping. That day, she said, close to 26 people signed up. That's when meetings started up again. Those people who originally showed up formed the board, and The Printery Foundation officially became a non-profit with Karen at the helm.
Karen's love of music and singing, which is what she studied as a vocal music major when she and Mike met in college, is one of the other driving forces behind wanting to get The Printery up and running. She knows that the North County deserves a performance space, and she is hoping that it's sooner rather than later that The Printery can open and become a thriving space for arts and culture in the area.
On top of all her work with local non-profits, Karen is also a real estate broker and owner of Classic Coast Realty and the proud owner of Hope Chest Emporium.
"I'm honored to be a part of the community providing everyday home and garden supplies that people need and a lot of fun stuff," said Karen of her store.
Karen also enjoys spending time with her boyfriend, Greg, and pets, Moonshine and Bailey, her poodle terrier mix who never leaves her side.
King & Queen
Fifty years ago, Don and Janey Giessinger made the move to Atascadero from Burbank and solidified themselves in the city that they have called home ever since. As fans, past participants, and members of the crowd at the Colony Days Parade since its inception, Don and Janey were extremely honored to find out that this year they will be an esteemed part of the parade themselves when The Colony Days Committee announced that they will be the 2024 Colony Days King and Queen. "I thought when Kent Kenny called me that it was quite an honor, to say the least," Don said. "I said, 'What? We're not that old yet, are we?'"
"I was surprised," Janey added.
Before they made their way to Atascadero, Don and Janey were raising their two children down south in Burbank. However, it was Lake Nacimiento that brought them to the North County. They would make their way to the lake through the Central Coast with their boat so they could go water skiing. And that's when a love for the area started to grow in the family.
"There was all this acreage. The town [Atascadero] was very small then, but on the sides of the roads, you could see all these cows and horses," Janey said. "I said, 'I wouldn't mind living up here, Don,' and he said, 'Well, we could, I guess.' He was doing retail wholesale furniture [at the time]."
Aside from their drives to the lake, Don would also travel all the way to San Luis Obispo to sell furniture, but he never ventured further north for that purpose. Along the way, Don was invited to play golf with a client, and he brought Janey along to go shopping. On the way home from that trip, they had their first official conversation about how great it would be to live here.
Don & Janey GIESSINGER
"The rest is history. I went down, and I had my furniture business too, down there, a retail business. Basically, I wound up putting it up for sale. Ran a big sale and sold the building, and about, I think, in three or four months, we were moving," stated Don.
They moved themselves and their young kids, Darin and Jeanna, onto a few acres in Atascadero, where they built their first house. Later, they would buy a larger piece of property, where they also built a home for Janey's parents. Since their move here, Don and Janey have owned three different successful businesses in Atascadero. Town and Country Fashions, the A&W that used to be on Morro Road, and the much-loved 76 gas station and convenience store that still stands next to it.
"When the opportunity came, and I saw fast food was for sale in town, I thought maybe this could be a perfect fit for my wife. Something she'd like to do," Don said. "Most people thought we were crazy because it was not a good, successful business at the time. It had been open
as an A&W for less than a year."
They took the A&W business over in 1991 and ran it until 2006 when it switched hands to Darin and his wife until 2022 when they moved to Texas.
"If it wasn't for A&W, I never would have had the 76," Don continued. "They were right next door, and that was available, sitting there empty for 10 years, as a lot, growing weeds, and I decided I said, 'What do I have to lose? I'm right next door. It maybe could work?' It turned out to be a good location."
Both Don and Janey reminisced about what it was like to move to Atascadero 50 years ago, and Janey talked about how there was only one stop light at the time and the post office used to be tiny. They also stated how they've been to every single Colony Days Parade from the start, or at least every one they could make it to.
"Right off the bat," Janey says of attending the first parade. "My parents were there [Burbank], and they moved
up much later. All of our friends from high school were down there. We were just up here by ourselves thinking we've got to find some stuff to do. We can't take the boat to the lake every day. The kids have got to go to school, and then all the sudden, it came up in the paper, and it says, The First Colony Days Parade."
They used to go to the Rose Parade in Pasadena every year, so they didn't know what to expect when they showed up at the first-ever Colony Days Parade.
"I said, 'but Janey, we've got to go. It's gonna be the first one.' They had two or three floats, something like that," added Don. "We had a great time because we were kind of laughing compared to the Rose Parade, asking if this is really a parade. Well, I guess you could call it that. There's a band."
"Three bands, San Luis, Paso, and Atascadero," continued Janey.
And their participation in the parade itself grew as their kids got older. The kids would ride on floats they helped make, and Darin marched in the band playing saxophone. Janey, a horsewoman, which is one of the many reasons that brought them to Atascadero, also rode in the parades after she joined the Vaqueras Del Camino Horse Club. But their excitement about sitting in the classic Cadillac and waving to the crowd as this year's royalty has yet to be matched.
Janey, who was a drama major at Burbank High School, where she and Don met, was also drawn into the world of Pioneer Players when they got here. She said that she was in so many musicals and plays that the now defunct community theatre company put on that she couldn't even remember them all.
"I used to go to all of them even after I wasn't in it anymore. We did so many musicals and shows, I can't even begin to name them all," continued Janey.
"We did a lot of big shows up there. Big numbers, costumes, scenery, I mean, I was in the show, doing the scenery, everything."
Don also got excited about the nonprofit side of things in the North County and belongs to a bunch of different groups, including the Rotary Club, Elks Lodge, El Camino Homeless Organization (ECHO), Friends of the Lake, Atascadero Printery Foundation, and LIGHTHOUSE Atascadero.
Together, Don and Janey enjoy golfing at Chalk Mountain Golf Course, and during the summer, they head to courses in Los Osos and Morro Bay. Janey pointed out that she also enjoys the Paso Golf Course because that's where she broke 90, and she'll never forget that.
On top of their two children, Don and Janey are grandparents to four grandsons and one great-granddaughter, with a great-grandson on the way.
"We love it here. It's the best move we ever made from Burbank," concluded Janey.
