Fun at the Fairgrounds
Big crowd turns out for games, food and fireworks
The Four States Fairgrounds seemed to have attracted a crowd that more closely resembled a Four States Fair rather than an Independence Day fireworks audience—but that’s the way it looked Saturday.
“We had a pretty good crowd last year, but this year the weather seems a little cooler and it looks like that’s what brought out a lot more people,” said Andi Darby, one of the chief organizers of this year’s Sparks in the Park Independence Day celebration.
While the numbers were hard to estimate at presstime, Darby guessed them to be at least in the thousands.
As in years past, the event had a surplus of family activities, which included a Sparks photography contest, ice cream eating contest, “patriotic strollers and rollers” contest, patriotic costumes contest, seed-spitting contest and Oreo cookie stacking contest.
Darby said there were also sack races, ball runs and water balloon tossing competitions.
While the the weather seemed a few
degrees cooler than in years past, that didn’t stop snow cones, lemonade and dozens of soft drink varieties from being the hottest sales commodities. Free ice cream cones, full of the vanilla flavor, were being given away for free at the fairground’s well-air-conditioned livestock and agriculture learning building.
During the time that live music performances entertained audiences leading up to the fireworks, several Texarkana, Ark., firefighters busied themselves teaching their Junior Firefighters Challenger Program to kids ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade in age. From about 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Deanna Smith, wife of Arkansas-side Fire Department Battalion Chief William Smith, said about 250 to 300 or more kids practiced rescuing a mock victim as well as making their way through a smoky tunnel before emerging from the pipeline confinement to fight a mock fire.
“We’ve had kids go through this before at last year’s Sparks in the Park as well as at Camp Preston Hunt for the Boy Scouts,” William Smith said.
William Smith added that once the fireworks started, he and the rest of the firefighters were scheduled to be on standby if need be in case of a mishap.
With Sparks in the Park being a patriotic event, the Texarkana Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 278, also took part.
“This year the numbers of people did seem pretty high,” said VVA Chapter President Greg Beck. “We got here at 2 p.m. just to make sure we would have a place.”