Get set for Littleton/Lake Gaston Fest
- By Jenny Gray [email protected]
- Jul 15, 2014
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Olivia Smith, 11, left, Mackenzie Keeling, 11, and Willow Holley, 12, keep cool on Lake Gaston Sunday while taking in the scenery on a tube. The damsels were on a summer visit with Smith’s grandparents Richard and Virginia Smith of Henrico. Local residents and visitors are gearing up for the season’s The Crossing event on Aug. Nine and the Littleton/Lake Gaston festival Aug. 29-30.
Kris Smith | The Daily Herald
LITTLETON — For thirty years people have been whooping it up on the streets of the little town with the big heart during the Littleton/Lake Gaston Festival, now organized by the Littleton Lions Club.
This year should be identically arousing, according to Lions Club President Bobby Johnson.
“The dance last year was wall-to-wall people,” he said. “It’ll be packed. You won’t be able to get anyone else in there.”
This year’s event will include a Friday night street dance from seven to ten p.m. on Aug. 29, plus hot rods and hot food, among other activities.
Playing at the Friday dance, which is free, will be “Steve Owens and the Summertime Band” with food vendors opening at five p.m.
On Aug. 30, the festival will run from ten a.m. to four p.m.
“We’ll have about twenty three vendors set up Friday, and on Saturday about seventy five or eighty craft vendors selling all different kinds of crafts,” Johnson said.
Most of the activities will be along the town’s parking areas on the north side of U.S. Highway 158, albeit the Stray Cats Rod and Custom-made Demonstrate will set up Saturday on the south side, in a parking lot behind the BB&T Bank, Johnson said.
“We will have mostly local entertainment on Saturday,” he said. “Our Lions Club sells barbecue sandwiches and other vendors have Greek Food and just about everything. Local church groups might have fried chicken or fish, and there will be cotton candy, ice juice, clean-shaved ice.”
The Littleton Lions Club recently upgraded its website and is still adding information about the festival, but vendor applications are available on that site, Johnson said. (www.littletonlionsclubnc.com)
Carnival rails, a climbing wall and perhaps a bounce house will be available for kids.
“It’s a real family-friendly event,” Johnson said.
The Club took over the festival’s organization in the mid 1990s, he said, adding he wasn’t around when the festival commenced thirty years ago.
“It commenced as a one-day festival called Littleton Downtown Turnaround, but that was way before my time,” he said. “About 17, eighteen years ago, the Lions Club became the primary sponsor for it. All the proceeds derived will be put back into the community.”
As a service organization, the Lions Clubs International performs community service in two hundred nine countries. The organization is especially focused on helping people with vision problems, offing eye screenings and eyeglasses, especially for children.
“We primarily deal with issues with the blind,” Johnson said, adding the group supports research on diseases and disorders.
The club also supports Camp Dogwood, operated on Lake Norman in Catawba County by the North Carolina Lions, he said. In the fall, N.C. Lions Clubs also host the N.C. Lions VIP Fishing Tournament on the Outer Banks for blind and visually impaired people in North Carolina.
“We also support local stuff like the Dame Scouts in Littleton, the John Three:16 Center, Habitat for Humanity, the Littleton Volunteer Fire Department and the Warren Rescue Squad,” he said.
The club is always looking for fresh members, according to Johnson.
“My wifey (Debbie) and I are both Lions members,” he said. “There’s a lot of private pleasure for us to be involved in it.”