No lukewarmness seeped into Mountain City’s Fire & Ice Festival. Hot salsa and burgers. Cold ice cream and drinks. Warm conversations. Cool time chillin’ to the music of Island Texas.
Young and old and in between, each taster picked up a ballot for our famous Fire and Ice Tasteoff.
Kameron Welma garnered the most votes in hot sauce competition. (On Loving Mountain City’s Facebook page, Karen Hermann commented, “Jennifer and Pete must be so proud.” Don’t you know it?!) For the second year, the Porterfield family clenched first place spot for “Ice.” The Porterfield gals served up Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream. Congratulations to the winners! And, a big thanks to all who contributed entries, making this fun feature of the festival possible.
Kudos and kisses to Roland and Mary Garza for setting-up, grilling, preparing, and serving burgers and hot dogs for hours, and staying afterwards to take down. Hands down, they garnered “most hours on feet.” Again, a big hand for the Garzas!
And, another round of applause for Island Texas! Our hometown musicians entertained us, free of charge, until mosquitoes drove them off the stage at closing.
Our Loving Mountain City event planning team, headed by Amy Hilton, put in many unseen hours beforehand planning and preparing, just in time to put stuff away, evaluate, and surge full force forward with plans for Operation Turkey, Christmas Décor “Competition”, and, Tour de Lights.
Heads up. Please Christmas-decorate by early December. On Monday, Dec. 8 and Tuesday, Dec. 9, several volunteers will look at least once at each and every decorated house. Then, they will devote hours narrowing down nominees into categories. Another team will spend hours marking sections and nominated decor. These volunteers serve so that every household may have fun voting during the weekend, Dec. 12-14.
Used to be, voting required hours. For the few who voted, it was not fun.
Here’s a request to all readers: Please help me (coordinator of Christmas Décor fun). What word works better than “competition”? Give me a word to convey that this is fun, and those who “compete” give (with love) countless hours of planning and preparation to gift neighbors and visitors with a delightful “Loving Mountain City” holiday experience. As we have a fun time “voting,” we pull together to acknowledge the efforts of our appreciated neighbors, like colorful strands pulled together to make beautiful Christmas bows.
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Verlenne Monroe and Gary White, Loving Mountain City volunteers, pulled a beautiful coral snake from their Poplar pool on Monday morning. Scary.
Coral snake anti-venom is scarce nationwide. Wyeth ceased making the product in 2003. The last lot, marked “expires October 31, 2008,” was approved by the FDA for use through Oct. 31, 2014.
Gary tossed the headless 18-incher into a tree, as a Caracara treat. They often see “Mexican eagles” in the field. And, sometimes, they see rattlesnakes in their pool.
What are you seeing in and around Mountain City? Please send tidbits to ptom5678@gmail.com (subject: TIDBIT) or phone 512-268-5678. Wanna text a tidbit or contribute the word I need? 512-517-5678. (Tell me who you are, please.)
Thanks! Love, Pauline
