South Carolina Credit Unions - Discover Our Culture

The Lee County Cotton Fest

Oct 18, 2009 | Comment(s) 0

I believe in my last post I mentioned something about being at a small festival, in a small town. The Irmo Okra Strut was soundly beaten by The Lee County Cotton Fest in Bishopville in the small town, small festival categories. Lindsey was out of town attending a graduation ceremony for her brother and was unfortunately unable to attend.

The town of Bishopville is quite small. The festival was still being set up so we decided to scope out the area. We ran into a friendly event attendee who told us a little bit about the festival and the area, including the famous Bishopville Library. The first night of the festival was kind of slow. There really wasn't much going on. In fact, most the other vendors hadn't even set up. It was already about 8:00 and we decided that it really wasn't worth our while to set up our whole area for only a couple of hours and a handful of people. When we arrived the next morning I was really expecting more of the same. But this turned out to be the second small town festival to surprise me. The morning moved kind slow but as the day progressed droves of people came out.

The folks at this festival were super friendly and very talkative. Teresa (a friend that tagged along to wittness the ItPays2CU experience) and I both had a great time. I gave her a crash course in the CU campaign the day prior so she was up to speed and able to talk at length with the people who came up to our tent. Like I said before, she was a huge help. What's more she did it for free! There was a small parade that consisted mostly of streetcars, motorbikes, and Halloween floats with the usual ghastly ghouls. One particular group of the undead walked past and the DJ vendor next to us threw on Michael Jackson's "thriller". Varying versions of the thriller dance immediately sprung up among the attendees, and the ghouls and goblins of the parade. Surprisingly there were also swarms of young children. The Itpays2CU minis Frisbees were a big hit with the kids. They exasperated our Frisbee supply with alarming speed.

All in all, it was another surprisingly successful event. Even in this small town, a few were familiar with the campaign. Good to know that the campaign is being effective and its reach is steadily growing.

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