FRYEBURG – Gusting winds Saturday drove temperatures into the jackets and blankets range, but thousands of fair-goers took it in stride to see the 100th anniversary Grand Parade.

The Fryeburg Fair hosted the 10 a.m. to noon parade of livestock, people, three marching bands, and cars, trucks and tractors of all makes, models and years.

“This was a pretty decent crowd,” parade announcer Mike Hathaway of Madison, N.H., said afterward. “We had folks sitting out here since 8 o’clock to get the best seats track-side. Even the grandstand was packed with a few thousand.”

Doug Forbes Jr. of Weymouth, Mass., who has a second home in Fryeburg, wasn’t about to end 40 years of tradition by not attending the fair due to the chilly weather.

“We’ve never missed it,” said Joy Anderson, one of his three daughters. “My grandfather used to do antique cars in the parade.”

Forbes said his father, Doug Forbes Sr., always entered his 1947 Crosley and his 1963 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia in the Grand Parade.

Absent this year, the cars are expected to be restored to run in next year’s fair.

This year, Forbes Jr. brought his children and their spouses and children – all 30 of them – to Fryeburg just to attend the fair.

They’ve cut down on their mileage now that Joy’s sister, Faith, and her husband, Bruce Smith, no longer travel 3,500 miles one way from Vancouver, British Columbia. Four years ago, they moved to Massachusetts.

“We always came up here for Columbus Day weekend. Now, it’s a little bit easier,” Smith said.

Another long-distance driver, Bob Switzer of Anglishtown, N.J., traveled 380 miles to attend the fair. His brother, harness racer Kevin Switzer of Falmouth, competed on the Fryeburg track. In the winter, Bob Switzer snowmobiles in Rangeley.

It was his fifth year at the fair, but the first time he’d seen the parade.

“I like to come up and watch the pulling, the horses and the oxen. I’m just amazed by the size of these animals. They’re just huge,” Switzer said.

Lisa Fadi, also of Anglishtown, stood beside him watching yoked pairs of oxen and their handlers parade past.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” she said of the parade. “I like the oxen and the horses, the draft horses. Back home, we see horses and cows, but no oxen or big 6-foot-tall horses. Our fairs are nothing like this. Our fairs are typically just craft fairs. This is more family-oriented.”

“We don’t have stuff like this in Jersey. You don’t see an oxen parade too often,” Switzer added, quickly taking a camera out of his jacket to photograph a tiny toddler riding bareback atop an ox.