Friday evening I felt like an Olan Mills photographer. I made snapshot portraits of more than 100 people with my digital camera.
That’s my role during Wassail Fest. It keeps me out of the way and replenishes our inventory of Local Folks, the photographs we run at the bottom of each day’s newspaper. It’s not a hard sell; I’d say about 95 percent of those passing through say yes to the 15-second photo session in our makeshift studio in The Dispatch front offices.
By the end of the evening, I was, as I have been in years past, left with this thought: Who are all these lovely people? I don’t know if it’s the night, the season or what, but so many of our wassail-ers Friday evening seemed to glow with happiness. It’s that way every year.
I’d like to think it was our winning personalities, the wassail or, this year, the lovely Christmas music supplied by the violin duet Jessica Smith and Jan Atkins, but I think it’s something more, the event itself.
What could be nicer, a non-commercial celebration of Christmas with friends, neighbors and fellow townspeople? A downtown street party.
We served wassail to young couples pushing strollers, parents with teenage children, students from The W, State and MSMS, locals and new arrivals, including a couple who recently moved here from Ohio back in the spring. The husband, with white hair and a full walrus mustache, could pass for Jeff Horton’s big brother. They seemed delighted to be living in the South, especially with the advent of winter.
People came through with hair dyed turquoise; others dressed like they just crawled out of a duck blind; women came through all fixed up and glittery; other wore sweatshirts and knit caps. Firefighters, bank presidents and college professors. Just lovely.
Main Street Director Barbara Bigelow thinks this year’s Wassail Fest was the largest ever. “That’s not coming from me,” said Barbara. “That’s from the merchants.”
Based on a ballots count (attendees vote on the best wassail), Barbara estimates 2,000 joined the fun last year. Twenty-two businesses participated this year including several new ventures: Books and Boards, Anointed Apparel and Steel Forest Furniture.
Ashley Gressett’s Books and Boards is a combination bookstore, game shop and community center. Ashley, also The Dispatch’s Imagination Library coordinator, will share her Main Street storefront with Rachel Guerry (of the Artesia Guerrys) who is opening the eagerly anticipated Three Sisters Pie Company in the coming weeks.
Brandon and Heather Banks, former Palmer Home house parents, have just opened Anointed Apparel north of the Market Street entrance to the Trotter. They tout the store as a “woman’s paradise.”
Sandra Pilkinton is manager for Chip Gerber’s Steel Forest Furniture on Main Street across from Dispatch offices. Gerber, who owns Mississippi Steel Processing, collaborates with Mark Perrott of Mississippi Farm Tables in Aberdeen to make distinctive steel and wooden tables. He also makes home accessories and custom signs from his company’s steel.
Pilkinton, who described their visitors as “an eclectic mix,” said they ran out of Wassail by 6:45. That allowed her to sample the “to die for” sugar cookies available at the MUW’s new Culinary Arts food truck stationed next door in front of City Hall.
If you missed this party, you’re not completely out of luck. There’s another downtown shindig scheduled tomorrow night, the annual Christmas parade. With rain chances high for Monday, Bigelow said the parade might be postponed until Tuesday. The city will make the decision late Monday morning, she said.
Whichever the case, we hope to see you there.
Birney Imes is the publisher of The Dispatch. Email him at [email protected].
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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