Remembering the past
♦ Cave Spring’s Independence Day festival highlights history.
Cave Spring held its Independence Day celebration on Saturday and the crowds beat the heat with historical entertainment and a dip in the spring-fed pool.
Reenactors sat under the shade of the colonial style porch at the Cave Spring Welcome Center and rehearsed their lines together.
John Gilbert said he’s been doing historical reenactments since 2000.
“We’re not really reenacting, we’re portraying historical characters of Georgia,” Gilbert said. “I have always loved the history of our country.”
He started because his wife said it would be an interesting hobby, he said, and now participates with his daughter where they share their love of history.
Before the reenactment started, Mark Hendry was at work handcrafting full length brooms and whisk brooms using the same tools and materials colonial settlers would have had access to in the 18th century.
“They were made at a time when things were not just functional, but also beautiful. The things that people used in their day to day were their artwork,” Hendry said.
He added, “It’s a nice reminder in this day and age of where the country started... People were open to public discourse and that didn’t make people enemies. It’s nice to remember that it’s the foundation to a functioning democracy.”
Meanwhile a couple of blocks away, beauty queens ranging from 15-month-olds to teenagers participated in the Cave Spring Independence Day Beauty Pageant.
Toddlers waddled across the stage holding their parents’ hands and twirled to show off their red, white and blue outfits.
Molly Moss entered her daughter in the toddler competition.
“We didn’t really want to put her in the big pageant, so we figured this would be fun for her first pageant,” Moss said.
Asked if she had fun, the little girl nodded yes and bashfully covered her smile. Moss planned to take the celebration back to her house to have a cookout with family and friends.
Sean Henderson came all the way from North Carolina to visit
her family in Cave Spring. They sat together on a shady lawn, sipping away at the homemade lemonade and telling jokes to each other.
Eva Henderson said she grew up in Cave Spring and has been coming to the festival since she was a child. It’s the first time for her infant daughter, the next generation of the family tradition.