If you’re at all a townie in the Laurel Highlands region, Fort Ligonier Days hype is real. If you’re a Ligonier native, chances are that you live for Fort Ligonier Days.

Ligonier Valley Middle School is where it all begins. When you’re a student at the middle school, you discover your first taste of Liggy freedom: walking downtown from school. On any given Friday throughout the school year, if one drives thru Ligonier, they see countless adolescents who evidently have just been introduced to the freedom of walking without parental supervision from the middle school on the hill to downtown Ligonier. Businesses around Ligonier aren’t their biggest fans, but come Friday, it never fails that the ‘walker list’ at the middle school virtually triples compared to what it is on any other given day. (If you graduated from Ligonier, you’re probably laughing out loud as you read this, but only because you know this is the truth). Middle school is the time when you’ve gotta work your magic on your parents so that they’ll let you walk downtown with your friends. When your parents ask you why you need to walk downtown, you don’t have a real answer, because there really isn’t a purpose to walk downtown, except of course, the freedom. When you walk downtown from the middle school, chances are that you go to subway or to foxes (the only chain restaurants that Ligonier has), and then you go to the playground, just to sit around and bullshit with your friends. And odds are that you have a boyfriend or girlfriend who you want to walk with and hold their hand. I know that’s at least what I did when I was in middle school (lol).

And when you’re in Middle School, you look forward to the Thursday before Fort Days more than anything. Hell, the Thursday before Fort Ligonier Days is the best day to walk after school. If you were one of the unfortunate ones whose parents would only let you walk after school one day a year, you would pick the Thursday before Fort Days. Why? Well for one reason the list of walkers on that day is at least five full pages long. Another reason would be to see the transformation of Ligonier overnight; garbage cans and parking ropes, booths and food stands, the street shut downs; it all begins on the Thursday before Fort Days. Let’s not even mention the corning and pumpkin smashing that happens after the sun sets over Ligonier.

When you’re in high school, Fort Ligonier Days isn’t such a big deal, if you don’t have a license, you walk up into town with your friends or high school sweetheart and chances are that you see people your parents know. If you resemble your parents in any way at all, you get approached by strangers asking “Oh my gosh, honey, are you Kelly Springer’s daughter?? You look just like her, be sure to tell her that her best friend from high school’s sister’s husband’s mom’s cousin asked about her and saw you!” (No lie, that’s really happened to me, I just might’ve exaggerated the familiarity a little bit).

Then there’s experiencing Fort Day’s while you’re a college student. What a time to be alive! This is the weekend that everyone who you haven’t seen since high school comes home. This is the weekend full of good ‘ole Liggy reunions. This is the weekend of introducing your closest high school friends to your new boyfriend or girlfriend. Experiencing Fort Ligonier Days when you’re a college student is the best weekend you’ll spend at home. Once you’re 21, you get to finally go in and drink at those dive bars including, Joe’s and The Wicked Googly and Fat Daddy’s (my personal favorite only because it’s my place of work, not because I’ve experienced getting black out at any of these places, unfortunately I’ve still got one more Fort Days to experience until I’m finally 21). But if you’re not 21 yet, this weekend is full of drinking at one of the other underage Ligonier alum’s houses in front of a fire, bundled up and surrounded by the people who you spent your entire childhood with, but you haven’t seen for five months before they left for school in the summer. This is a weekend of spending time with the people that you realize you want to have in your life forever. This is a weekend of realizing that in a short two years, you’re going to be thrown into the real world and in a short five years or even sooner than that, these people will start to get married and have babies and be real life adults. (Scary… I know!) In ten years, this weekend will probably be spent at one of these people’s houses with their spouse, and their kids running around in the yard with your kids. When you’re in college, Fort Ligonier Days is a huge wake-up call, but when you’re in college, Fort Ligonier Days makes you proud to be a Ligonier townie for sure.