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Turn On. Tune Onion. Drop out. 

Some towns are built on factories. Some are built on agriculture. No one doubts that without the hoagie, Tyrone would be a mere tasteless, hold-the-onions blip on the map.

Recognizing that, Tyrone Borough Council, in cooperation with their corporate overlords, Gamesa, will channel funds from the proposed industrial windfarm into “A Salute to Our Heroes: Gamesa’s Medium-Green Hoagie Happening!”

The event is slated for the town’s Labor Day weekend.

The celebration will officially kickoff on August 29 with Onionstock, a music and onion festival, held at Reservoir Park. Bands include Cured Meat Funkadelic, The Red Hot Pepper Flakes, and the Gardner Guards, Slight Return.

On Saturday, the town will gather for the first-ever “Hoagies On Parade.” The route will start at the former Agway, wind down 15th Street, onto Pennsylvania Avenue and finish up the the National Guard Armory where kids can participate in Bobbing for Hoagies and games of Hide and Go Meat.

Following the parade, Up With Onions!, a group of America’s greatest singers and dancers, will perform a patriotic tribute to the hoagie called, “Celebrate! Good Buns Tonight!”at the Railroad Park. Selections will include: “We Can Be Heroes,” “(We all live in a ) Yellow Submarine,” “Tubesteak Boogie,” and other hoagie odes.

A competition between the town’s rival sub and hoagie makers will be held throughout the day in the downtown area. Trophies will be given out for “best hoagie,” “quickest hoagie maker,” “most interesting use of the onion” and several other categories.

The 2nd Northwood Mounted Hoagie Brigade, a group of Hoagie War reeanctors, will hold an encampment in soldiers park.

Special appearances will be made throughout the day by renowned author and speaker Donkey Hoagie, the Altoona Mirror’s food critic Conan the Hoagarian and other minor celebrities like Medium Greek.

Not all residents are pleased with the Hoagie Happening. Members of Hoagies Anonymous are planning to hold a counter-demonstration on the weekend of the festival. Ned A., a member of Fresh Beginnings, the local HA chapter, said that few people know the extent of hoagie addiction in the community.

Ned said he fought off a three-hoagie-a-day addiction and has been medium-clean and sober for six months. “My life revolved around the hoagie and this community’s culture of the hoagie, no doubt, played a role in enabling the depth of my addiction,” Ned A. said. “I lost my family, my job, my friends… mostly because my breath.”
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