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Saturday, Mar. 21, 2009

Midstate festivals hope low-cost entertainment draws crowds

When the economy nosedives, plunging right along with it into, say, a giant tub of grits, kind of makes sense.

At least it might at next month’s National Grits Festival in Worth County.

Not so much to take your mind off the country’s economic earthquake, but because it’s free. So is watching.

This spring, area festival organizers are hoping more folks across the region will turn to their mostly-free extravaganzas for bottom-dollar entertainment.

At the Grits Festival in Warwick, southeast of Cordele near Lake Blackshear, the Grits Queens toss out packets of instant grits at the one-day gala’s parade.

In April, Hawkinsville’s Harness Festival will, as it has for decades, offer those who pay to watch the horse-and-buggy races a chance to pick winners and, in a drawing, win cash.

Revelers at the Fire Ant Festival next weekend in Ashburn will battle for prizes in a fire-ant-calling contest.

“We do some crazy, hokey, wacky stuff like that,” Shelley Zorn, president of the Ashburn-Turner County Chamber of Commerce, said. “In small towns, we have to find a way to entertain ourselves.”

Not that down-home good times are immune to the financial sting.

In fact, just last month, a feature in the Wall Street Journal noted how the Fire Ant Festival “is saving $1,500 by shaving five minutes off the fireworks show and nixing plans for a dog act.”

The festival, in its 14th year, draws about 30,000 people to Ashburn, a town of about 4,000 along Interstate 75 between Tifton and Cordele. This year, the fest added a parade.

When times are tight, zany, oddball activities — the life blood of many off-the-beaten-path festivals — come in handy.

Plus, they hardly cost a thing.

One year, the Fire Ant fest had two people dress up as ants and stage a fake wedding. Another time, elementary school kids donned ant outfits and popped out of a papier-mache mound.

“We try to save money as much as we can every year,” Zorn said earlier this week. ”The economy is much tougher, but canceling was never a consideration for us.”

Even the hometown Chevy dealership is sticking with them to sponsor a 5k run.

“We realize that that’s a big commitment for them this year because they haven’t had a banner year selling cars,” Zorn said. “We have not lost any sponsors. But a local bank did cut back on the amount they normally give.”

She said the event’s food-vending slots are full. However, the number of arts-and-crafts vendors is off by about a third.

“They know that they might not have the sales that they would normally have,” Zorn said. “I think people will come and walk around, but will they buy?”

Over in Warwick, at the Grits Festival, organizer Bob Holland said, “We just lost a little bit of income from (sponsorships), and that’s to be expected this year. ... But the economy’s not really hurting us. It’s actually gonna help our people to go somewhere and have a good time and not spend a lot of money.”

The April 11 shindig will host an antique tractor show, a corn-shelling contest and a grits-eating competition. The thing to see, though, according to the festival Web site, is the “famous and unprecedented ‘Roll in the Grits.’”

“Nothing like rolling around in a cattle trough full of cooked ... grits to entertain you,” the Internet promo declares.

The winner, it says, “is the one who holds the most grits on him after a timed dip.”

To find out whose skin and clothing the most grits have clung to, judges weigh contestant before and after their rolls. In the adult category, a gain of anywhere from 30 to 40 pounds usually wins.

“That’s a lot of grits,” Holland said. “If you get a big old fellow in overalls, he can stuff in a lot more than someone that’s skinny.”