Festival Week

If it's August and hot, with football right around the corner, then you know the Watermelon Festival is upon us. The annual honoring of the melon kicks off this Thursday and runs through the week-end. I have too many memories and stories to tell regarding past festivals; but I can say that being a local boy has given me the opportunity to compete in arm wrestling, tug of wars, superstars competitions, tennis tournaments, watermelon eating, dog shows, watermelon olympics, 5k runs and plenty of stuff I've forgotten about over the past 30 years. When the festival was revived back in the mid seventies, it was really just a local gathering of a few hundred folks who came out to fair park for what seemed like a big picnic. Things have changed dramatically over the years. Those few hundred have turned into tens of thousands, and the organiztion needed to put this on is unbelievable. Mark Keith, with the Chamber of Commerce, does a wonderful job of organizing and promoting the event. So if you want great food, great music, plenty of home-town flavor and arts and crafts galore, then come to Hope for this week-ends world famous Watermelon Festival. I guarantee you two things; it'll be hot and it'll be fun.