The rains continued into Thursday and Friday to make for a muddy, wet, muggy and busy time working at the Damascus Community Fair. Made ruts in the grounds to get the popcorn popper and paraphernalia to the pole barn only to find no table. Returned with the load on Friday AM cutting more ruts and spinning into the pole barn. The night watchmen came to my rescue and unloaded everything. They even help set up and assisted hooking up the popcorn machine. What a blessing!
Turned the new popcorn popper on at 6:45 AM on Friday and it did not stop until 7 PM except for times when it needed to cool down. A couple of school classes canceled but more came than was expected. By noon, we had given out over 400 bags of popcorn. Fair attendees started coming in around 4 pm after the rains had stopped and we continued to serve 300 more guests. There were a goodly number of Lions who came to help but if you looked at us all; our hair was wet, our shoes were muddy, our clothes were muddy and we all looked alike!
Saturday was nice and sunny; the crowd was very good as by 7 pm they had devoured 950 bags of popcorn. Could have made more but —- ran out of popcorn! Again a goodly number of Lions came to help.
Had some popcorn kernels in inventory but needed seasoning and butter – went to Sam’s first thing Sunday AM only to find they were out of Seasoning, so purchased the butter. Tried using Season All but that had too much pepper in it and regular salt would not work. Thus Sunday’s popcorn was without seasoning. In 3 hours, we had given out 300 bags of popcorn and again, ran out. We shut down!
If you have calculated up to this point, we put popcorn in the hands of 1950 people. In doing so, we used 5 plus cases of prepackaged popcorn and another gallon of kernels. We had inquires about used eye glasses box locations, eye exams info from a school nurse, blood drive inquiries and membership discussions. Our give away was a Longaberger Americana Flower Door Basket won by Peggy Ray of Damascus.
Much appreciation goes to Lions Joy and Warren Schwab, Ray Molesworth Alice Denell, Bob Snapp, Ken Phillips, Mike Thornett, Chris Fletcher, Fran Burlas, Marcia Holpuch, Jerry Mallack, Wayne Marr, Midge Tench, Dennis Babb, Ken and Carol Cook, Partner-In-Service Jennifer Molesworth and Sue Suddath’s Grandsons. Should I have not included any Lion who helped, please forgive me and tell me so I can include you in my records. These Lions and family members clocked over 130 hours of time for this event. The cost to the Lions Club was approximately $200. “WE SERVE”