Townsend Rotary Fall Fest Car Show Breaks Records
 | Author:
Victor Sample
Vic Sample: MT43 News Treasurer |
Townsend Rotary Fall Fest Car Show Breaks Records
Victor Sample
The Fall Fest Car Show registration begins at 7:00 am on Sunday morning of the Townsend Rotary Fall Fest. It has been our tradition that John Rains, Keith Kirscher and I meet at 6:00 to set up the registration table. We set up a tent, got the table filled with registration forms, pens, markers and clipboards. Then we spend 30-40 minutes waiting for the car show registrants to show up.
A couple of years ago we started to have 1 or maybe 2 people show up for registration while it was totally dark. This year there were guys there before we started setting up.
By the time we had the registration table setup we already had almost 10 people that had parked their vehicles and were waiting to get registered. They had to stand under the street lights to fill out the registration form.
Of course, we have Fall Fest volunteers to help us; however, they don’t show up until around 7:00 am, the official start of registration. This year we had a great crew of younger volunteers show up to help; but, we already had registered around 20 cars.
This year, we had 8 volunteers in addition to John, Keith and myself. Quite often we get asked if we really need that many people to do registration at a small-town car show and the answer is YES. Townsend might still be considered a small town, but there is nothing small about Fall Fest or the Car Show.
Saturday morning the cars never quit coming in. There were many times during the registration that we had a double line of cars stretching from Broadway all the way back to the stop sign at the school patiently waiting to get registered.
If the weather is nice, we always hope to get 250 cars registered. On Saturday we knew we were going to get close to 300 cars if not more. Our record registration was 320. We kept getting feedback that the barriers marking the end of the space for cars needed to be moved back. Twice we had to move the barriers a full block to allow for more parking.
When we broke 300 cars registered, we were all pretty excited about maybe setting a new record. When we got to 315 cars registered I told the rest of the crew that if we were at 320 and no more cars, I would pull up my 2018 Nissan pickup and register it.
Fortunately, I did not have to register my pickup; we easily broke 320. We had registration form 321 all ready to go. We celebrated when car 321 came up for registration.
I had out-of-town friends staying at an AirBnB in the Power Townsend building. The night before I had told them that by the time they were ready to join Fall Fest again, we would probably have cars all the way down to their building – at least I hoped we would. When they came down they were pretty surprised to see cars stretching form the highway intersection to the end of the courthouse block and we still had a long line of cars waiting to register.
By the time registration ended, we had 325 cars officially registered. A new record for the Townsend Rotary Fall Fest Car Show!
There were still a few late comers that came and had to park on side streets because Broadway was entirely full!
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PhotoCredit: Photo Credits: Victor Sample
Image 1 Caption: Candice O'Hara celebrating the 321st car to register, breaking the old record of 320!
Photo Credits: Victor Sample
Image 2 Caption: Use the picture in the article titled "Picture for Car Show Registration"
