Pea Fest Hoping to Create Romance at Tiller Race
The Emerson PurpleHull Pea Festival wants to create a little rotary tiller romance.
The annual festival and its feature event, the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race – a race of souped-up garden tillers, is always the last weekend in June. And that creates a problem.
“June weddings are very popular,” says festival spokesman Bill Dailey. “Inevitably, every year, someone just forgets and schedules their wedding on the same weekend as the festival and tiller race.” Through the years, the festival’s volunteers, regular attendees - even tiller racers – have experienced this dilemma. “It just creates a quandary for family and friends,” added Dailey. “Which event do you attend? The wedding, or the festival and tiller race?”
Now an attempt is being made to eliminate this problem.
The festival is offering to give away a free wedding at its biggest attraction – the tiller race. The plan is this: If you’d like to get married during the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race the afternoon of June 27, the festival will supply an official to perform the ceremony.
“We’ve already got three people lined up willing to marry a couple,” says Dailey. “If you’d like a civil ceremony, former county judge Joe Mullins, who is from Emerson, can still legally marry folks. If you’d prefer a person of the cloth, we’ve got both a Methodist and Baptist minister also willing to do the knot tying.” One of the ministers, Rev. Barbara Lewis, a pastor in the United Methodist Church, says she hopes someone takes the festival up on its offer. “I’d like to do it,” says Lewis.
The prospective couple would need to show up with a valid Arkansas marriage license. But that’s about it. “I think it’d be a great way to get married,” says Mullins, the former county judge. “You’d have the entertainment supplied in the form of the tiller race. And the Pea-Stompin’ Street Dance, which we’ll have that evening, could be the reception.” Mullins also believes a tiller race wedding would be one few would likely ever forget. “And after it’s over, we can throw peas instead of rice.” “Hard to imagine a better setting,” added Dailey.
Any prospective couple is asked to go to the festival’s Web site, www.purplehull.com, and email their interest. Dailey says that even if they don’t get any takers this year, the festival plans to make the offer valid for next year as well, in the hope it will prevent the sort of conflicts that have arisen in the past.
The World Championship Rotary Tiller Race has been the PurpleHull Pea Festival’s major attraction since the festival began in 1990. This will be the 20th annual festival and tiller race.
Emerson is in Columbia County, 12 miles south of Magnolia, Arkansas, and 6 miles north of the Arkansas-Louisiana state line.
This year’s PurpleHull Pea Festival and World Championship Rotary Tiller Race will be June 26 and 27.
June 9, 2009
For Immediate Release - Contact person: Bill Dailey, Cell (501) 416-4657
Email: purplehull@juno.com
Web site: www.purplehull.com
