Hill Country Living
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
What a fun weekend in good ol’ Water Valley! The Water Valley Main Street Association’s Casey Jones Music Fest was this past Saturday and it was a great time! You Water Vallians really showed up. We can’t pull off a town festival without the town so thanks to each and every one of y’all who attended for playing vital roles in all of it. I’d also like to thank the city streets and electric crews, the town police and the good weather for all their extra work.
I would say it was a not-so-small miracle that the WVMSA got this festival planned and rolling except that I know exactly who did what to make it happen. It wasn’t a not-so-small miracle. It was simply hard and furious work by the Main Street Association board members and the financial support of our sponsors and donors.
As a board member, I’d love to take some of that hard work credit, but I just recently got on the board and didn’t do much except say “Sounds good to me” for the past two months and be in awe at everyone else’s ability to make things happen.
My on-site job the day of the festival was to man the hospitality tent that hosted food and drink for the festival sponsors. Jerri Anne Davis and The Simmons House crew catered this tent with a variety of snacks including incredible pastries from Main Street Treats and Hummingbird Bakery. I’d like to give a special shout-out to whatever that bacon and apple pastry was from Hummingbird Bakery. My God. That was so good that we should probably pass a city ordinance against that level of pastry pleasure. I don’t think we’re zoned for that kind of thing.
At the last minute, Jerri Anne the hostess extraordinaire, decided it would be in the best interest of the quality of the pastries to hand-deliver the sponsors specially made food and snack baskets instead of having the pastries sit at the hospitality tent all day waiting to be discovered. This was a very good call. For their safety, those pastries needed to be removed from my direct line of sight. This snack re-distribution also left me with an entirely empty tent.
So, I just walked around all day. Essentially, I experienced the festival as the common-folk while basking in the glory of festival volunteer status which was proudly displayed on my special laminate. For someone who did close to nothing all day, my phone logged that I took almost 18,000 steps. I found this confusing. Why is it that on an ordinary Wednesday my deliberate exercise doesn’t ever amount to much but on Casey Jones Music Festival day my near inactivity triples in exercise value? I’m not complaining. It’s just another reason to love this festival. It burns calories at a faster rate than other events in your life and, presumably, other festivals.
We can’t wait to throw this shindig again next year and make it even better! Although, I’m not sure the Antique Car Show element of the festival can be improved upon. It was near perfection, specifically, the Chevy Nova which is my spirit car.
Lastly, biggest thanks to the Water Valley businesses for making our town a lively and quality setting for a big street party. Events like this wouldn’t work in a ghost town and we appreciate yall’s daily hard work to keep it all rolling in the Valley!
