It’s Time Once More For The Huntington Catfish Festival by Karolyn Klaes It’s October and everyone knows what that means.....time for the Catfish Festival in Huntington’s Centennial Park! This year the festival will be held on Saturday, October 7th and this is the 4th year that the Huntington Business Owner’s Association (HBOA) have put this event on. Every year it just keeps getting better and better.
The festivities begin at 10:00 am in Centennial Park on Main Street in Huntington and will continue all day until 4:00 pm. Different activities will be going on throughout the park all day long.
There will not only be a Catfish Cook-off and tasty Catfish/Chicken Nugget plates for everyone to munch on but there will be other food vendors; arts & craft booths; face painting, and live music. Also bounce houses, train rides, Roselake Pony Rides and petting zoo will be there, rock climbing, an Auction, more live music, LOADS of free games, etc. Something for everyone to enjoy!
This year there will also be a “Weiner Dog” race which should be a lot of fun for everyone. This event is to help raise money for the 2018 Project Graduation. There is a $20 registration fee for this race and there will be two different races. One for actual wiener dogs and another race for the wannabe wiener dogs. If you are late registering don’t worry. You will still be able to enter right before the race but the registration fee will be $25.
The race will consist of five dogs per race so if there are 10 dogs register, there will be two races. The dogs will be timed and the wiener dog with the best time of all the races will be the overall Grand Wiener. There will also be a wannabe wiener dog race, same rules apply but the dog has to be under 20 lbs.
The rules for this race are as follows: 1. There has to be two people for each dog during race. 2. You can bring a toy but it can’t make any noises. No laser pointers, no whistles, nothing to distract the other dogs. 3. You cannot run alongside your dog during the race.
So if you have a “Weiner Dog” that you think can run his/her little legs off faster than any other Weiner dog then now is the time show us. The “Wiener Dog” race begins at 11:00 am so come on out, enter your pooch in this one of a kind race and try to pick up the title of the fastest Wiener Dog in town while helping the 2018 Seniors with their graduation plans!
The Huntington Centennial Lions Club will be having a booth set up at the festival and they are asking everyone to please bring their gently used eye glasses to them. Adult or children’s reading glasses, bifocals, prescription glasses, etc. are all needed. This is a special program that the Lion’s Club has where they take the donated glasses and send them in to get fixed up so that they may be given to others who will get some more use out of them. It is a very worthy cause and you are encouraged to please participate.
Some of the musical entertainment planned for this day will be Huntington’s hometown favorites Loose Gravel, the East Texas Outlaws, Angel & the Southern Heritage Gospel Band, Randy & Sherry Miller from Nashville, and the Pineywoods Harmony, who will be opening the festival. Each and every one of these entertainers will be giving an excellent performance so you are not going to want to miss any of them.
So mark your calendars and plan to come on out on Saturday, October 7th for a day of fun and excitement. Bring your family, friends, appetites, and most importantly, your Weiner dogs. This is guaranteed to be wholesome fun for the entire family! I will be seeing everyone there.