The Chickamauga Lions Club is bringing back Down Home Days May 3.
After two years of not holding the community festival due to weather and a lack of volunteers, the event is being reinvigorated for its 41st anniversary with all the fanfare of years past.
“People have asked us to take it back to the beginning of what we did,” Lion Donna Calhoun said. “We will have an 1890’s Day dress-up contest. … We will also have a beard contest. We want people to dress like they would have in the olden days with their dress, beard and overalls.”
A Cruise-in Classic Car Show starts at 9 a.m and runs throughout the day. The Down Home Days Parade, starting off with the Gordon Lee Memorial High School Marching Band, will fill the streets with music beginning at 2 p.m.
Retired radio personality Rich Phillips is serving as the day’s master of ceremonies.
Tours of the Gordon-Lee Mansion run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. that day and golf carts will pick up interested attendees. The Battlefield Pilot Club is hosting a casual-dress beauty pageant in the nearby Gordon Lee Memorial High School Auditorium throughout the day.
Vendors will line Gordon Street, offering Bark Buddies Birdhouses, Michigan-made soy candles, wooden toys and airbrush temporary tattoos in addition to food and drink. Patrons can sample bacon explosion wraps, turkey legs, Italian sausage, barbecue and popsicles. They can wash it all down with Coco Bongo non-alcoholic tropical drinks in collector’s cups shaped like coconuts and pineapples.
A Kid’s Zone with inflatables, face painting, sand art and a train pedaled by foot will be set up in front of Crystal Springs Printworks.
The city of Chickamauga and Modern Woodman of America agent Shane Catlett are sponsoring the 2014 Down Home Days. Modern Woodmen of American will match funds raised at the event. Funds raised will go to support local Lions Club efforts, including helping those in need afford to be able to go to the eye doctor and buy eyeglasses and helping the blind purchase seeing eye dogs. Lions will be collecting used eyeglasses and old cellphones to recycle for club proceeds too.
To learn more, find “Down Home Days Chickamauga, GA” on Facebook or visit chickamaugalions.com.