by Joan Eliyesil ·
Friday, September 20, 2024
– FALL FEST PHOTOS –
A picture-perfect mid-September day brought hundreds of attendees to the Harvard Lions Club’s annual Fall Fest on the library lawn. The dramatic highlight of the day, the first-ever pingpong ball drop from the town’s new tower truck, did not disappoint, and the human foosball table was in action from the start of the festival at 2 p.m. right up until it ended at 7 p.m.
While the club doesn’t count attendees, several members agreed that the number easily topped 1,000 people. Last year the festival was canceled because of heavy rains, but Lions Club president Wade Holtzman told the Press there were about 800 attendees two years ago. This year’s event easily bested that.
The Lions Club’s food booth, offering bratwurst, vegetable samosas, and funnel cakes, sold out of everything except hamburgers and hot dogs by the end of the day. Around 5 p.m., fresh-squeezed lemonade was the first item to be scratched off the menu as temperatures soared into the 80s.
Holtzman told the Press the club agreed to change the festival hours this year to mitigate the risk of Eastern equine encephalitis exposure, but the change in hours didn’t hurt, and may have helped attendance. Families with young children were the prominent demographic in the crowd, and the human foosball table, built by Holtzman a few years ago, proved to be hugely popular with kids. Contestants held onto long bars that operated like foosball table bars, trying to kick a soccer ball into their goal while players from the Bromfield soccer team refereed.
By 4:30, the lawn in front of the library was packed with spectators eagerly awaiting the pingpong ball drop. Attendees had the opportunity to buy tickets whose numbers corresponded to the unique number on each of 2,000 pingpong balls. Lion Chris Landry dug a hole for a red plastic cup directly below the drop point, the bucket of the tower truck ladder 100 feet overhead. The owner of the ticket whose number matched that of the first ball to land in the cup was to win $200, and ticket holders of subsequent balls to land in the cup were to win $20 each.
Tickets sold out shortly before the big event, so all 2,000 balls were dropped. But as the colorful balls streamed down from the tower and covered a large circle of grass around the cup, not a single ball fell into the cup. The ball closest to the cup was declared the winner, with the next two closest chosen as runners-up. Mark Capobianco of Chelmsford took home first prize, while James Steeves of Ayer and Grace Paro, a Bromfield middle school student, each received $20.
Almost 30 vendors filled the EZ-up canopy tents at the edges of the lawn. Some were selling their wares, others represented community organizations looking for volunteers, donations, or just visibility. One of the vendors, Lucia Carrington from Stow, said the Lions were very accommodating, setting up the tents and allowing the vendors to park right next to them. “They know what they’re doing,” she said.
Harvard’s vendors included the Climate Initiative Committee with an electric vehicle petting zoo; the Harvard PTO; the Harvard Family Association with a popular face painting booth; Fivesparks; and the former Harvard Cable Committee, now rebranded as the Harvard Media Cooperative. The Bromfield Celebration Committee was also there, hoping to recruit parents of middle school kids to start helping with the popular after-prom party. Harvard Alpaca Ranch was also selling its products, although owner Matt Varrell admitted that his fleecy items sell better when the temperatures are lower.
This year’s festival also featured three craft beer vendors. Dirigible Brewing, which opened in 2022 in Littleton, brought two beers, a Czech dark lager and a pumpkin wheat ale that sold out before the festival ended. Two Harvard “nanobreweries,” or breweries that produce fewer than 15,000 barrels of beer per year, both also emptied their taps by the end of the day. One was Loyal Foe Brewing Company, which brews its beer at 177 Mass. Ave. in Harvard. Its beers are mostly sold wholesale, and it’s available on tap at the General Store in Harvard. The other brewery, Under the Stairs, is run by Holtzman and his partner Nat Beale. Beale told the Press they produce only 10 gallons at a time; it is also available at the General Store in 5-gallon kegs.
Three bands provided continuous music from the start of the event to the end. The first, One Twenty Too, consisted of six Groton Hill Music School students between the ages of 13 and 16. Both the lead singer and the drummer are Bromfield students. The band practices once a week, and it recently raised over $1,000 for the school at a fundraiser. Their repertoire included familiar tunes from Coldplay, Joni Mitchell, and the Beatles. They’ll be playing at the annual Harvard Flea Market on Oct. 5.
The musicians in the other two bands were all Harvard dads. The first, Wednesday Night Project, consisted of Brad Besse on bass, Mike DelRossi on guitar, Mike Derse on keyboards, and Steve Lynch on drums. DelRossi said they got together during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they’ve played for the past three Harvard PTO galas. The last band to perform, the Barnburners, featured Mark Moran on bass, Craig Reichenbach on drums, and Marc Binnick on guitar. Besse told the Press the Barnburners were the “more experienced” of the two dad-bands, and, not surprisingly, classic rock made up the bulk of both bands’ repertoires. Derse provided and ran the sound system, which was set to just the right volume to allow the crowd to socialize during the music.
Just before 7 p.m., as the moon rose, the Lions announced that the festival was ending. Hundreds of people were still chatting on the lawn, human foosball was going strong, and a few hungry attendees were in line for whatever food the Lions could scrounge up. “I think it was a good day,” one of the food concession volunteers commented as she was packing up. The lingering crowd appeared to agree.
– FALL FEST PHOTOS –