The 41st annual Down Home Days Festival will be a subdued event this year.
There will be no pancake breakfast to fortify participants or spectators for a parade and street fair in downtown Chickamauga.
There will be neither contests to determine who has grown the best beard for the event nor beauty pageants for little girls.
No internationally famous county music rising star or established legend will perform to a crowd of thousands.
No, this year's will be a quiet affair and the two-day celebration of past years that drew as many as 15,000 will be only a memory.
The event has always been staged by the Chickamauga Lions Club.
"This was never set up as a fundraiser. It was a way to bring the community together, a homecoming event," said club president Donna Calhoun.
Factors beyond the Lions' control combined to make this year's cutback inevitable.
"We are down to about 10 active members," Calhoun said, noting this mirrors a national trend of all civic clubs reporting sharp declines in membership. "Of those, about half have serious health problems."
Eddie Upshaw, a seven-time past president of the club, said this is not the first time Down Home Days has been in danger of disappearing.
"We hit a rut like this back in the late 1990s. It was almost cancelled in '97 or '98, but it came back with a vengeance," he said.
Rather than cancel, the club has scheduled one event each day for this year's community festival.
There will be a chili supper followed by bingo at the Chickamauga Civic Center (behind the public library) beginning at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 3, and a gospel sing at Fellowship Baptist Church (adjacent the Shop Rite) at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 4.
Organizers say the festival could be restored to glory - possibly next year - if more sponsors and volunteers come forward.
"The city has offered all the help we need. We have the support, we just don't have the manpower," Upshaw said.
Anyone interested in volunteering to help with the event or offering corporate sponsorship can contact Upshaw at 423-667- 3167 or Calhoun at 706-260-7897.
"We're not just giving this up," Calhoun said.