Trampled by Turtles appealed to all ages at their annual Bayfront Festival Park on July 9 as the week's -- and summer's -- highlight. Photo by John Gilbert.

Can it really be midsummer?

Our late-arriving warm weather makes that seem questionable, but the annual pause in the sports routine for Fourth of July fireworks and the Major League Baseball all-star game can’t be mistaken, giving all of us sports fans a chance to check in with things that are important to our whole families.

or us, that means the annual Trampled by Turtles concert at Bayfront Festival Park. The sports world for us in Duluth takes a welcome break as we watch the Twins falter from lack of consistent hitting and go into the all-star break one game below .500 and a half-game behind the Cleveland Guardians, who climbed into first place as the Twins were swept by Baltimore.

And maybe that’s appropriately timed, too, because of the somber undertones afflicting all of us who have watched hockey blossom and grow in Duluth. That is the “celebration of life” being conducted this Thursday at 2 p.m. in the Clyde Iron Works Milling Room for Pokey Trachsel and his wife, Cathie, the victims of a tragic highway accident on a northbound highway that forms the boundary between California and Arizona, where they had been spending recent winters.

It becomes especially somber because it is just a week after the funeral for Kevin Hoene, a former Duluth Cathedral teammate of Pokey in the late 1960s. That attracted many familiar faces of those who played at Cathedral under Del Genereau on the strongest high school hockey teams ever produced in Duluth. Isolated from the state public schools tournament, the private and Catholic high schools of Minnesota had their own tournament each year, and the mighty Hilltoppers from Duluth Cathedral won four consecutive independent championships, which, not coincidentally, were the four years that Steve (Pokey) Trachsel skated on defense for the Toppers.

Former Duluth East coach Mike Randolph was a year younger than Pokey, and lived two blocks from the Trachsel family, which had sent Jim, Bill, Larry and Pokey through the St. Anthony grade school and on to Cathedral. There was no recruiting done in those days; the Trachsels from Lower Chester and the Hoenes, Phil and Kevin, from the Longview rink, formed the nucleus of Cathedral’s domination for most of the decade of the 1960s. “It was a great time to grow up in Duluth,” Randolph recalled, “because we had no TV, no cellphones, so our parents all threw the kids outside to play and said, ‘See you at supper.’ We always made up games. Pokey would walk two blocks up the hill and we would get a game going, whether it was baseball or maybe a touch football game on the blacktop parking lot at St. Anthony school or in front of Munger.”

Pokey was big for his age, and became a dominant football player as a high school quarterback, where, Randolph recalled, he could throw the ball “on a dime” the full length of a football field, and he also was a baseball standout, as a pitcher and hitter for a Duluth Little League select team that went to the National Little League World Series, losing only in the championship game.

“We’d play pickup baseball games and if you hit the ball into the street it was a home run,” Randolph said. “Pokey hit one that flew across the street, into a yard, and broke a second-floor window of the house that was there. And of course in hockey, everybody knew about him because he was the biggest kid as a ninth grader. I would love to know what his record was for all his teams in baseball, football and hockey all the way up from youth sports through high school.” A

fter high school, Pokey went to UMD and played very well at defense, and he handled the puck so well they moved him up to forward and he scored five goals in one game — still a UMD single-game record. Those who played with him or observed him play regard Pokey as possibly th most talented hockey player ever to grow up in Duluth, and certainly among the best multi-sports athletes. While the shock of their sudden demise on April 3 has not worn off, their daughters, Lisa, Allie and Lindsay, are carrying out their mom’s stated preference for a celebration of life rather than a funeral, so the Thursday gathering will be just that, at the Milling Building behind the Clyde Iron Works restaurant, adjacent to the Heritage Hockey Center.

Fireworks and music The annual Duluth fireworks has its own place amid summertime highlights in the city, and because I had to pick up our older son, Jack, at the Duluth Airport at 10:45 p.m. on the Fourth, I knew I’d have to miss the fireworks extravaganza over the Duluth Harbor. But instead, as I was driving into Duluth along Hwy. 61, I realized the fireworks showed a unique view from the Lester River bridge area. So I stopped and shot a few photos by iPhone out of the car window, capturing the colors and reflection on the Lake Superior surface from 5 miles away.

It was easier to catch the Trampled by Turtles concert five days later to wind up the festive week. Every year, Trampled by Turtles becomes more worldly and more popular everywhere, but they retain the personal relationship with the city of Duluth, where they got their start while coming from all points to meet while attending college at UMD. That bond, formed 20 years ago, drew them together to start making music and evolved to creating their unique style of high-speed bluegrass, with meaningful lyrics. The terms “bluegrass” and “meaningful lyrics” historically have been mutually exclusive, but TbT has changed all that, eliciting many other groups to start playing with a similar sound.

As their albums have proliferated and they have gone national and then international, the original fivesome always finds their way back to Duluth for the Bayfront show, which this year was last Thursday, July 9. It drew the biggest crowd we’ve seen attending their shows on a great evening, which has been announced at 10,000 sold tickets — but seemed like twice that.

Among the constant highlight performances of 21 songs past and present from their 20-year history, it was special when the father of “Banjo Dave” Carroll came on stage to play harmonica with the group. Lead singer Dave Simonett introduced him by saying it was only fitting, because he loaned them the money to make their first album 20 years ago. Another highlight was when bass guitar virtuoso Tim Saxhaug took over the vocals on a heartfelt cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2U” as part of the three-selection encore.

Their always-refined production has taken on a more sophisticated feel, but the blend of mandolin, fiddle, banjo, guitar and bass guitar, with the added touch of cello, connects in a tempo-changing harmony that all comes together on every song. The force of their up-tempo selections were clearly the crowd favorites, but the fans tolerated the slowdown when Simonett invited Alan Sparhawk of Low up to join the group for three slow numbers. When you spread the group’s skill and pace over the endless collection of songs, it was only fitting that the show ended with “Duluth,” and the indelible closing line, “…there’s no place like home.”