A Stroll Through Carnival Weekend

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WATER VALLEY – The 56th annual Watermelon Carnival will fill Water Valley with music, food, old friends and a lot of laughter. By the time the weekend is over, most of us will have eaten more than we planned, stayed longer than we intended and visited with at least six people we had not seen since last carnival.

Carnival weekend begins Thursday evening, July 30, at The Civic, where the Town and Country Garden Club will present the Watermelon Music Festival at 7 p.m. It is a fine way to ease into the weekend, sitting in the air conditioning and enjoying good entertainment while everybody is still rested, freshly dressed and able to remember where they parked.

Friday is when Carnival begins to gather steam. Craft and food vendors will be set up throughout City Park, along with plenty of children’s activities. The Chamber of Commerce booth beside the gazebo will be open all day with Carnival T-shirts and vendor information. The T-shirt is particularly useful for people who realize by midday that they did not dress for Mississippi in summer.

The official opening ceremonies begin at 6 p.m. on Central Street. Mayor Tommy Reynolds will welcome the crowd, Lillie Faith Mathis will perform the national anthem, and Watermelon Queen Preslee Fischer and her court will be introduced.

It is one of those moments that feels like Water Valley. Children are shifting from foot to foot, parents are trying to take pictures, longtime friends are waving across the street, and somebody near you is almost certainly holding a paper plate.

At 6:15 p.m., attention turns to the northeast corner of the park at Central and Court streets for the Watermelon Drop. Watermelon Queen Preslee Fischer will do the honors from a bucket truck supplied by the Water Valley Utilities Commission, sending the watermelon on its annual journey from high above the street to the pavement below.

It is a simple formula. Lift the queen. Drop the watermelon. Then listen for the splat and the cheer that follows as seeds go skittering across the pavement.

Immediately afterward, Charlie Mars will take the Central Street stage for the first hour of the FNB-Water Valley Street Dance. Charlie has performed on stages all across the country, but there is something special about hearing him play right here at home.

The Spunk Monkees will take over at 7:30 p.m., keeping the Street Dance moving until the fireworks begin at 9 p.m.

The Fireworks Spectacular, sponsored by BankFirst and the Chamber of Commerce, will light up the sky. Children will point. Adults will take blurry pictures with their phones. At least one person will say, “I think that was the last one,” several minutes before the actual last one.

Once the fireworks are over, the Spunk Monkees will return to the stage at 9:15 p.m. and keep the Street Dance going until 10:30 p.m.

Then everyone will go home and get a good night’s sleep. That is the official hope, anyway.

Saturday begins early, because the Watermelon Carnival has never believed in wasting daylight.

The Water Valley Lions Club Pancake Breakfast opens at 6:30 a.m. at the Casey Jones Railroad Museum and continues until 10:30 a.m. At the same time, registration begins at the Railroad Park Pavilion for the 38th annual BankFirst 3K Walk/Run.

The race starts at 7:30 a.m. at Railroad Park and remains free to enter. Serious runners will be ready at the starting line. Families, walkers and folks who simply enjoy being part of the morning will be there too.

Participating in a 3K and then eating pancakes and sausage is called life balance.

By 8 a.m., the 31st annual Car Display will be underway at Shuffield Park. Sponsored by the Fischer Properties Team of RE/MAX, the free display will continue until 4:30 p.m. Rows of polished cars will give people a chance to admire chrome, paint jobs and interiors that appear never to have carried a muddy child, a shedding dog or a soggy bag of groceries.

Behind Renasant Bank, teams in the Train Tracks Pork Attack Barbecue Cooking Contest will spend the day tending their smokers and preparing their best entries for the judges. The aroma drifting through downtown will be enough to make even the strongest among us reconsider whether we are truly “not that hungry.”

From 9 to 11 a.m., children can get an up-close look at working vehicles during Touch-A-Truck downtown behind City Hall. Sponsored by the Water Valley Area Chamber of Commerce, the event will feature fire trucks, work vehicles and other large pieces of equipment, giving youngsters the chance to climb, explore and ask approximately 400 questions before anyone can answer the first one.

Meanwhile, Tom Foolery will perform at the City Park gazebo from 9 to 11 a.m.

Tickets for the Tasters Choice Bar-B-Q Contest will also go on sale behind Renasant Bank from 9 to 11 a.m. Only 100 tickets will be available, so anyone hoping to sample the entries and vote for a favorite should not spend too much time pretending to think about it.

Beginning at 10 a.m., the entries in the Largest Watermelon Contest will be on display at the City Park gazebo. These are not ordinary picnic-table watermelons. They are the kind that make people wonder how anyone managed to get them out of the garden.

Also beginning at 10 a.m., a free air-conditioned trolley, sponsored by the Water Valley Area Chamber of Commerce, will run between City Park and downtown every 15 to 20 minutes. Trolley stations will be located at the southwest and southeast corners of the park, and the trolley will continue running until 3 p.m.

The trolley makes it easy to take a break from the park and spend a little time downtown, where local shops, boutiques and restaurants will be open and ready to welcome Carnival visitors. Browse a while, enjoy lunch or a cold drink, and take full advantage of one of downtown’s finest attractions: air conditioning. In Mississippi in August, an air-conditioned trolley leading to air-conditioned shops and restaurants is not merely transportation. It is a carefully planned survival strategy.

At 11 a.m., the Junior Auxiliary will begin the children’s watermelon games on the grassy corner of First Christian Church. The games are free, fun and likely to involve sticky hands, plenty of laughter and memories that will be talked about long after everyone is cleaned up.

At the same time, the Tasters Choice barbecue sampling begins behind Renasant Bank. Ticket holders will taste the dishes and vote for the best one, which is serious responsibility disguised as lunch.

Jacob King will perform at the gazebo from 11 a.m. to noon. At noon, the Youth Watermelon Growing Contest winner will be announced at the gazebo. These young growers have spent months tending their vines and waiting to see what might come of one small seed.

At 12:15 p.m., it will be time for the Largest Watermelon Contest. This is where ordinary produce ends and local legend begins. These watermelons are not the sort you tuck under one arm on the way out of the grocery store. Some look as though they should have their own trailer, road permit and escort through town.

Pharm Truck will perform from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., providing the soundtrack as Saturday afternoon settles over the park.

At 1 p.m., free watermelon slices, sponsored by Cayce Washington, will be served at the southwest end of City Park.

Nothing tastes quite like a slice of watermelon on Carnival Day. Juice runs down your hand, somebody needs half a roll of paper towels, and nobody worries too much about manners.

Experienced Carnival-goers know to lean forward while eating. Watermelon juice has no respect for a clean shirt.

Tanner Mills will take the gazebo stage from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.

At 2 p.m., the antique cars will leave Shuffield Park and make their way to City Park in the Antique Car Parade. It is one of those Carnival sights that never gets old. Engines rumble, chrome shines in the afternoon sun and people line the route to wave as the cars roll by.

Some spectators will admire the engines. Others will quietly wonder whether their own vehicle has ever been that clean.

Business Casual will perform at the gazebo from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., followed by Cadillac Funk from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

By this point in the afternoon, children may have visited every activity twice, grown-ups may be carrying purchases they had no intention of making, and everyone will have developed a strong opinion about which food vendor to visit next. Most people will also be carrying a shopping bag, a half-empty lemonade and at least one item belonging to somebody else’s child.

The Train Tracks Pork Attack winners will be announced at 5:15 p.m. at the gazebo, bringing the official schedule to a close and giving the barbecue teams a chance to collect their trophies, accept their applause and finally sit down.

The Watermelon Carnival has plenty of scheduled events, but the moments you remember most have never fit neatly into a timetable.

They come when you run into a former classmate near the gazebo and talk for 20 minutes, or when grandparents watch children play the same watermelon games their parents once played. You find them when musicians look out from the stage and spot friends, relatives and neighbors singing along, and when conversations stretch out over pancakes, barbecue and cold watermelon while the music plays nearby.

Later Saturday evening, the park will begin to quiet. Vendors will pack up, families will head home and tired volunteers will start the work of putting everything away. Before long, someone will sum it up the way Water Valley always does: “It sure was hot, but it was a great Carnival.”