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Community, heritage themes of festival
By BEN GARRETT
Independent Herald Editor
September 21, 2006
HUNTSVILLE — Visiting the campus of Scott High School this Saturday will be like taking a step back in time, to the frontier days of Scott County . . . when just about everything was done the “old-fashioned” way.
Saturday’s Heritage Day festival will culminate months of preparation by Scott High School faculty and students, and hundreds of man-hours that have gone into preparing the Museum of Scott County and surrounding grounds for the festival.
From the building and trades class — which is building a stage area on the south side of the museum building — to the agriculture class — which has grown and harvested an acre of sorghum on the school’s campus — a large part of the Scott High School student body has been involved in making the festival a reality.
“We’ve had kids working around the clock,” Museum Curator Gary Sexton said. “Over 200 kids from this school have been involved.” In addition, around 50 students from the school will take part in Saturday’s festival, many of them dressed in traditional frontier style.
Saturday’s festival promises a bit of everything. While the festival itself will begin at 10 a.m. (and continue through 6 p.m.), things will get cranked up around noon, when the first of four bluegrass bands take the stage. Whitewater, Mountain Rose and Victory Bluegrass are scheduled to perform throughout the afternoon.
There will also be a large number of demonstrations and performances scheduled, including:
• Sam Perry, an author from McCreary County who has written several books on the Big South Fork and surrounding area. Perry will be dressed as a longhunter and will provide characterizations of frontier life;
• Tom Wright, a rail-splitter, will be doing rail-splitting demonstrations. In addition, log-hewers from Barna Log Homes will be providing demonstrations;
• Bob Stepp will be on hand with his world-famous sheep dogs to demonstrate sheep herding on the school’s football field. Stepp will give three demonstrations throughout the day, during which he and his dogs will be working with four sheep that the dogs are unaccustomed to. According to Sexton, Stepp “can make those sheep do whatever he wants them to, using nothing but whistles and very few voice commands” to direct his dogs;
• Jeff Shannon and Dennis Marshall will perform a civil war encampment, and will be dressed in character as Union and Confederate soldiers;
• BJ Higgs, a blacksmith, will be on hand to provide blacksmith demonstrations;
• Dennis Burgess will demonstrate pre-historic weapon-making, flint-napping and primitive fire-starting methods;
• JoAnn Walker will demonstrate chair-bottoming;
• A quilting demonstration will take place inside the museum building;
• Sam Storey will be running a sorghum mill throughout the day, where sorghum raised on the school’s campus will be stirred off throughout the afternoon. Molasses made on Saturday and the days leading up to the festival will be available for purchase;
• Horse and wagon rides will be available throughout the day.
• Ernie Smart will demonstrate rifle-making; and,
• A horseshoe throwing contest will be held at 2 p.m. The format will be partners, three-pitch running. The entry fee is $5, with a $50 cash prize being awarded to the winner. Contestants can bring their own shoes.
In addition, several clubs from Scott High will be involved. Among them, the journalism club will be taking and selling “old-timey” photos, and the FCCLA club will be making and selling wreaths and string angels.
A number of craftsmen will be on hand, selling everything from bonnets and wooden toys to furniture and quilts. In all, some 15 craftsmen will be selling Appalachian-style crafts.
There will also be food vendors on hand, with pinto beans and cornbread and sauer kraut and weiners, scalder bread and molasses, and more “modern foods,” such as hamburgers, hot dogs, nachos, funnel cakes, candy apples and fresh-squeezed lemonade.
Sexton stressed that the festival is not a fundraiser or a money-maker for the school or for the museum; all the money raised by craftmakers and food vendors is “their money,” he said. In the end, he added, the festival will wind up costing $2,000-to-$3,000.
While the festival itself, as well as parking, is free, the museum does operate on donations and will gladly accept donations on the day of the festival.
“The purpose of this festival is to provide a community gathering for people to see what their heritage was like and to give people a chance to come out and have a good time,” Sexton said.
The festival will also provide an opportunity for the school to showcase its ever-growing museum complex. The complex, which began with the Museum of Scott County, has grown to include the USS Tennessee Battleship Museum and a two-acre “frontier village,” which includes a frontier log home and a one-room log school house, both of which were moved to the frontier village and reconstructed.
Both museums will be open on Saturday, and SHS students will be giving characterization tours of the Museum of Scott County. The museum will also feature the immensely-popular “big buck display,” which was featured in the past and is being brought back for the festival. If all goes as planned, the display will feature 14 of the largest whitetail deer bucks ever in Scott County, including Bill Thompson’s 17-point Big South Fork non-typical that grossed 198 inches.
While Sexton is hoping for the weather to cooperate Saturday, he said that the festival is a “rain-or-shine” event.
The festival is being co-sponsored by First National Bank of Oneida, First Trust and Savings Bank, Citizens First Bank, Barna Log Homes and Plateau Electric Cooperative.
news@ihoneida.com
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