This weekend, Jordan will host the Fall Festival for the 64th time. Wanda Bard is one Jordan resident to have volunteered at every single one. “It’s just one of those things you get into it and you don’t know how to get out of it!” said Wanda, who, coincidentally, married her husband, Don, the summer preceding the first festival. Wanda’s favorite part of what has become a massive fundraising effort has always been the people. “I love getting together with people and seeing people that you don’t see all year,” she said. Wanda and Don took over the hamburger, sausage, and hot dog stand when Wanda’s father, Harold “Tommy” Howe, died in the late 1960s. The Bards continue to run the stand as a family to this day. “It’s everybody, the whole clan,” Wanda said. “Even the younger kids. They run the pop machines, and that helps a lot.” The festival has grown tremendously since 1946. It was first held behind Charlie Taylor’s gas station, located across from Village Hall. Don started working at the festival in its third or fourth year when it was first moved to the school grounds. “It’s getting a little bit too big for our little village here; it takes a lot of volunteers,” Wanda said. When September comes around, the pressure kicks in. “You think, ‘Oh my gosh, the festival is coming up.’ But once you get into it — it’s just one of those things that you just do.” The Bards receive help from nearly 40 volunteers in serving the many customers at the festival. How many customers? Don ordered 400 pounds of sausage, 280 pounds of hamburger and 200 pounds of hot dogs, along with seven bushels of peppers and five bushels of onions, in anticipation of this year’s event. Volunteerism at its best
Shirley Drummond, the festival’s chair since 1987, said the event runs on the help of three to four hundred volunteers every year. Money raised from sales made at volunteer-staffed booths go to the Jordan Community Council, which disperses funds to non-profits such as the Jordan Pool, the food pantry and the scouts. “People take a certain amount of pride in keeping this going because they know it does so much good for the community,” Drummond said. The mayor’s contribution
As the chair of the Jordan Pool committee, Mayor Dick Platten knows first hand the festival’s greater contribution to the community. Funding from the community council makes up close to a third of the pool committee’s budget every year. “Without the fall festival we wouldn’t have a municipal pool,” Platten said, adding that this year 110 children learned to swim from pool instructors. Since the 1970s, Platten has been responsible for serving one of the most popular items at the festival, the barbecue chicken; he does better than 2,000 halves every year. Platten calls in a lot of volunteers to help pull it off.
“In all the years that I’ve called people, I’ve only had one person say ‘No, I’m not interested in doing that,'” Platten said. “It must be we have a good time.” Fun for all ages
The festival features amusement rides, live music, Parky the Clown, arts and crafts, teen karaoke, a pancake breakfast on Sunday — starting at 8 a.m. and running “’til gone” — an impressive car, bike and truck show, and perhaps most anticipated of all, Sunday’s greased pole climb competitions — one for kids at 10:30 a.m. and one for adults at 1 p.m. Visitors near and far can also look forward to the festival’s many fried food favorites, including its one-of-a-kind homemade donuts — “the good fried foods that aren’t good for us but we eat anyway,” Drummond said. The festival kicks off with a fish fry lunch from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, and the grounds will reopen at 5 p.m. with a concert by The Jam Bones. The festival grounds are located on Beaver Road near Ramsdell Middle School, where parking and a free shuttle service will be provided. Admission is free. Fall Festival lineup for 2010
Friday
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. — Fish fry lunch
5 p.m. — Festival grounds open
5 to 9 p.m. — The Jam Bones
9 p.m. — Festival closes until Saturday
Saturday
10 a.m. — Grounds open, Pumpkin painting, child and senior masons free I.D. program
11:30 a.m. — Parky the Clown and Friends, Youth Soccer Challenge Competition
Noon — Chicken BBQ ’til gone
4 p.m. — J-E Marching Eagles
TBA — The Flyin’ Column
9 p.m. — Grounds close until Sunday
Sunday
8 a.m. — Pancake Breakfast ’til gone, Car, Bike n’ Truck Show registration
9 a.m. — Ecumenical Church Service
10:30 a.m. Kids greased pole cross
Noon — Chicken BBQ ’til gone
TBA — J-E Community Band
1 p.m. — Greased pole climb
2 p.m. — Teen karaoke
4 p.m. — Grand prize drawing, Car, Bike n’ Truck Show Awards
5 p.m. — Festival closes until 2011