Things got started at about 5:30 p.m. with the openings of the vendors for business. Spiderman and Hello Kitty bouncy castles began to take in little guests. The food trucks included Shell Shocked, Hurricane Henry Shaved Ice and Southern Grub. Several tables were set up by vendors, too. These included Aunt Fern’s Fried Pies, Samantha Rae Adams’ Permanent Jewelry, Aurora’s Lemonade and Snack Shack and Freeze-Dried Candy.
A parade of children marched down the walking path of the park at about 6:00 p.m. At about 9:20 came a spectacular, hypnotizing fireworks show at the former Emmet school baseball field. The number of attendees were impressive.
The whole thing was sponsored and organized by Emmet Vision Association, City of Emmet employees and sponsors Hines Trucking who paid for the fireworks show, Highway 67 Gas N’ Grill who brought the two bouncy houses and Tiffany Cagle who made possible the kids’ train.
Deanna Allen, a founding member of EVA said, “It honestly was a collaboration between the Emmet Vision Association the city workers to pull all this together. Our goal is to help our city prosper and move forward and grow, and so that's why we put on these events. EVA is a nonprofit organization. All of the funds that we raise, we put right back into the city.”
Among the city workers who helped with preparations and helped on Friday evening, too was Waterworks Superintendent Juan Aparicio who said, “We worked together with a lot of other volunteers to get the things down that we needed, so we can see people come. We represent the town and the city to make it look nice. Maybe they’ll say, ‘Look what we’ve done. Look what they do here.”
The fireworks show was designed and set off by Darrell Miller out of Nash, Texas. It started at about 9:20 p.m. and launched many screaming rockets to the cloudy skies that exploded into hundreds of red, blue, yellow, green, violet and white mini-comets for a solid 20 minutes. Many children came from all over the region with their families to see the show and did not leave disappointed.
