It Takes A Village To Throw A Carnival
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
What a weekend! In any other rain-out situation, I would opine that even the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. But this saying doesn’t mention anything about watermelons. So maybe that’s why, despite the stormy weather, the 56th annual Water Valley Watermelon Carnival not only endured but prevailed!
My outlook wasn’t so positive on Friday, though, when the bottom fell out of the sky. My well-planned agenda for the day (that I had kindly typed out and texted to all my friends) became totally obsolete the minute the first raindrop fell. My plans were as follows: “5:30, Go to Erin’s show at the new gallery. 6:00, Opening Ceremonies. 6:15, Watermelon Drop. 7:00, Find the hotdog stand I saw on Facebook, 7:15, Eat a hotdog (Chicago style). 9:00, Watch fireworks. 9:15, Go to bed.”
My mistake was making plans that involved being on foot and not finding an umbrella beforehand. It just never occurred to me that it might rain on the most important day in Matt Laubhaun’s favorite town.
The only action item from my agenda that I managed to get done at the self-assigned time was “9:15, Go to bed.” Everything else happened in a jumbled mess. Instead of attending the Watermelon Drop in person, I watched a recording of it from Hallie Thomas’s phone while drinking watermelon-lemonade margaritas on Natalie’s Turner’s front porch.
While not on the pre-planned agenda, this manner of viewing the event was a great experience that I highly recommend. Honestly, I’m sort of relieved that I wasn’t at the actual drop as the watermelon chunks flying at the speed of light looked hazardous. There are less exciting ways to get injured than from a hit to head from melon shrapnel, though. I imagine it’s worth the black eye from flying rind and multiple tiny bruises from seed bullets just for the good story.
The fireworks show was great, as always. From my vantage point, I could view it in all its glory right over the old Dollar General, silhouetted by a cell phone tower and a church steeple. The big finale was so intense that I was nervous something had gone off script for a second but, no. It was just our fierce love for watermelons as manifested in gunpowder explosions and fire.
Saturday was lovely. There was no rain whatsoever, and a nice little breeze cooled down the town! I bought two hand-crocheted watermelon-themed potholders and attended the Junior Auxiliary’s kids’ Seed Spitting Contest. I enjoyed this cute event. This is more than I can say for someone’s grandpa next to me who walked away proclaiming, “Oh, I see. There’s cheating going on. It’s rigged.”
I personally didn’t see cheating going on in the 12-and-under Seed Spitting Contest, but there was a slight level of chaos where some seed projections may have been unintentionally overlooked.
Thank you to the Water Valley Chamber of Commerce, the citizen volunteers, city workers, town organizations and local businesses who all came together to make this event happen. It takes a village to throw a Watermelon Carnival, and the village of Water Valley did a great job!
