Homemade ice cream, food trucks, quilting, spinning, loom weaving and other heritage craft demonstrations, children’s activities, Christmas photo sessions, and arts and crafts vendors were were all part of the festival, which benefited the nonprofit museum.
The nonprofit Main Street Crestview Association organized the Fall Fest. The city organized the Trunk or Treat event.
The seed library, which has about 70 varieties of seeds and debuted this afternoon, was created by the Crestview Garden Club in partnership with the Okaloosa Extension Office, Crestview Public Library and Okaloosa County Master Gardeners.
“They’re mostly vegetables,” Garden Club Co-Chair Sheri Murphy said today about the seeds. “We also have seeds for fruits, flowers, herbs and other plants. They will be seasonal, according to when they should be planted.”
The seed library was made possible by volunteers who collected seeds and sorted them for distribution, according to Garden Club member Allison Finch. The seeds are stored in a filing cabinet that will be stationed behind the front desk at the Crestview Public Library.
Each seed packet contains three to five seeds, Murphy said. There is a checkout limit of five seed packets per month and per household. The seed library’s seed catalog will provide helpful growing tips and information.
This afternoon, Crestview Mayor J.B. Whitten sliced the ribbon at the seed library’s ribbon-cutting ceremony on the grounds of the public library. The celebration included informational booths, a plant clinic, a soil sampling education table, 4-H-led kids’ activities, and seed packet giveaways. Afterward, residents were able to choose seeds to take home and grow.
“It’s a really cool idea, and I hope that it really ‘gets off the ground,’ and lots of people benefit from it,” Larry Williams, residential horticulture agent with the Extension Office, said about the seed library during the ceremony. “We’ve seen a renewed interest, even with kids, in getting back into (vegetable) gardening. And I’ve loved watching that: getting out in the real world and growing something.”
“You know why, Larry? The price of groceries,” Whitten said.
“That could be part of it,” said Williams, who then noted that many people have moved to Crestview in recent years.
“A lot of young couples have their first home, and they remember their granddaddy’s traditional in-ground garden,” he said. “They know they can’t pull that off, but they’ve got their first home, and it’s scaled down to, you know, the smaller typical home, but they want to try their hand at it. So, they’re going with raised-bed gardening.”
Oh, and there’ll be candy.
Lots of it.
“We’ve asked all of the vendors to bring treats for all of the kids,” Amy Koger, executive director of the nonprofit Main Street Crestview Association, said today.
This year’s Fall Festival is scheduled to take place from 4-8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25 on portions of Main and Wilson streets in downtown Crestview. The annual family-oriented celebration, which has taken place since at least the early 1990s, is organized by the MSCA in partnership with the city of Crestview. Admission is free.
Koger said each festival draws about 10,000 to 15,000 people.
“It’s awesome,” she said.
In addition to providing candy, the event’s vendors have been asked to have some sort of game for kids to play “so they can enjoy the whole four hours” of the festival, Koger said.
She also noted that the event’s KidZone will have several attractions, such as face painting, obstacle courses, and a corn sandbox area.
The pet costume contest is set for 4 p.m. and the human costume contest is set for 6 p.m. The city’s “Trunk or Treat” event, which will be held in conjunction with the Fall Festival, will take place at Wilson Street Park, 375 N. Wilson St.
To make way for all the fun, the following streets and portions of streets will be closed at 1 p.m. on Oct. 25: Beech, Oakdale and Woodruff avenues, as well as Main Street between Beech and Industrial Drive and Wilson Street between Beech and Woodruff.
The museum is in the historic Bush House, 198 S. Wilson St. This year, a pair of visiting Berliners will add authenticity to the event.
More about history and culture than quaffing a 1-litre “masskrug” of foamy beer, the museum’s observance — for its October Second Saturday opening — features displays of various beer drinking vessels inside the almost century-old Bush House, re-monikered “Das Busch Haus” for the day. Outside, colorful flags of German länder — federal states — festoon the house.
Other temporary displays look at various aspects of German and Bavarian culture, such as models of German castles and artifacts from German history, including its dark Third Reich and East German days. These exhibits will be up through October.
Free samples of traditional German cuisine will be available, such as brezen (pretzels), Lebkuchen (spice cookies), and Spezi (a popular soft drink that is half cola, half orange soda) will be available in the kitchen. Donations are welcome.
Visitors are encouraged to dress for Oktoberfest as they visit the museum, sample the cuisine, listen to German music, and greet Berliners Tillman Fischer and his son, Jonah, who are visiting Crestview friends for two weeks. Feel free to ask the Fischers questions about German history and culture.
Editor’s note: Brian Hughes is the cultural services specialist for the city of Crestview.
The celebration will take place at the Crestview Community Center, 1446 Commerce Drive. Admission is free, though donations will be accepted.
“We’re expecting a large turnout,” Augusta Whittle, the library’s adult services librarian, said today.
She said NERDCon will include three panels, a costume contest, appearances by several authors and a local production company, and various vendor booths and food trucks.
Here is the panel lineup:
Vendors will include GameMasters Guild and two comic books shops, “basically any kind of nerd fandom,” Whittle said. “We’ve tried to run the gamut on that.”
Items available for purchase will include pens, trading cards, plushies, and Pokémon and Dungeons & Dragons items. Food and beverages will be sold by about half a dozen food trucks parked outside of the community center.
Guests should have multiple forms of payment to make purchases from the vendor booths and food trucks.
Whittle said NERDCon attendees “are encouraged to cosplay,” or dress up as their favorite characters, “but it’s not a requirement by any means.”
Their Gulf Coast Media bookstore, which contains thousands of free used books in various genres, as well as many rock-bottom-priced used DVDs and CDs, opened shortly before last Christmas at American Self Storage, 1501 E. James Lee Blvd. (U.S. Highway 90). The bookstore is open from noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays.
On a typical Sunday, about 25 to 40 bookworms visit the store.
“All of the books are free,” Roy said today. “It’s $1 for a DVD, and two CDs for $1: it’s just to make a little bit of revenue and help pay the (storage units’ rental) bill. Even one day when we have an actual brick-and-mortar bookstore, and that’s obviously the eventual goal, children’s books will always be free, no matter what.”
The couple’s current bookstore has a “soft limit” of 10 free books per household on each Sunday.
The overall bookstore operation is housed in five 300-square-foot storage units: one contains children’s books, another contains fiction books, one houses nonfiction books, and a mix of media that awaits a turn on the store’s bookshelves is stored in two other units.
“The middle unit is our fiction section,” Darlene said. “I like to call it ‘the mom room’ because it’s adult fiction. Everything on the bookshelf going all the way around is alphabetized by the last name of the author. If you have a favorite author, you can come find it easily.”
She said the bookstore has continued to grow in popularity since it first opened.
“On Sundays from 12 to 4, this entire row is just full of cars,” Roy said of the paved lane next to the first group of storage units. “I mean, it’s elbow room inside (the bookstore), and the heat doesn’t seem to be bothering anybody other than us, because we’re usually here for like four hours before it opens and an hour or two afterward cleaning it up.”
Saved from the landfill
In their day jobs, Roy and Darlene serve as the owners of Crestview-based Shot In Focus Schools & Sports Photography and SIF Real Estate Photography.
Roy, who recently served 1 1/2 years as chairman of the Crestview Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, said he and his wife obtain the books and other types of media for their bookstore in various ways.
“One thing is, people bring in donations,” Roy said. “A lot of people bring in the books that they’re done reading or movies they’re done watching.”
The bookstore also includes leftover items from regional estate sales.
In addition, “I offer book pickups, basically from Panama City to Pensacola,” Roy said. “Because of our day jobs, we’re able to get around a lot. So, it’s nothing for me, when I’m in Pensacola for a day or two, I’ll go around and pick up donations there. I do purchase some items as well. We offer bulk purchasing: so, if somebody is about to move out and they have a whole house full of books, we do pay by the pound. We don’t pay by the book, we just pay by the pound.”
He added that about the top 10% of all items acquired for the bookstore are re-sold online.
“But while a book might have a lot of value to you and me, by the time you pay for listing fees and shipping fees and stuff, there’s not enough margin left in it to really sell it online, but there’s still a lot of value left in this book,” Roy said. “So that’s where all (the bookstore in the storage units) is: these are all books that would end up in a landfill or who knows where if we didn’t put them on a shelf out here.”
He and Darlene said most of the visitors to the bookstore are Crestview residents. They also see residents of Laurel Hill, DeFuniak Springs, Florala, Alabama, and other towns. The mix of visitors includes many teachers and homeschooled students.
“One lady from Laurel Hill told me, ‘Don’t ever close! You’re the closest place for me to find books,’” Darlene said.
A full-time bookstore
Roy and Darlene have been looking around Crestview for a place to open a full-time bookstore that would include used books, the online sales of newer and higher value used books, and a coffee shop/cafe.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of inventory in Crestview that suits our needs, because we need more than the retail space of a bookstore,” Roy said. “Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of revenue in used books. People are not going to want to pay full price for a used book, so you can’t really run a bookstore just off of used books. So, we would be doing media sales as well: DVDs, CDs, vinyl, you name it. But we also want to bring the coffee, some place to have a meeting or entertainment.”
He said he and his wife are looking for at least 2,000 square feet of commercial space, which would contain the bookstore’s retail operation and its warehouse. The lease rates at several places the couple have looked at in Crestview, however, are way too high, Roy said.
There are locations in cities such as Niceville and Freeport that would meet the couple’s needs, he said.
“But if we can’t do this in Crestview, we’re not going to do it,” Roy said.
To learn more about the Gulf Coast Media bookstore, visit https://www.facebook.com/estesmediallc.
Early bird admission is $2 per family on Friday, when the sale runs from 2-6 p.m.
Admission is free on Saturday, when the sale runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Numerous books in different genres will be available for purchase at the cash-only sale. Hardcover books will cost $1 each, and paperbacks will be two for $1.
The overall event will include a bake sale. Proceeds from the book and bake sales will benefit the Crestview Public Library.
At this juncture, your feet will feel the coldness of the creek water seep through your kayak and replace the warmth of Rocky Bayou’s H2O. On the morning of Sunday, Aug. 3, I enjoyed this moment as much as I have on many prior trips to the creek, which contains the decades-old wreckage of an Air Force plane, as well as a wooden fort and the remnants of a military training bridge.
I arrived at the mouth of the creek after paddling for about 20 minutes from my usual departure point of Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park, next to Niceville and Bluewater Bay. The park charges a $4 fee for a single-occupant vehicle.
A few personal watercrafts jetted around the bayou while I paddled northeast to the creek on this mostly cloudy morning. Cool breezes greeted me following a rain shower, and not long after entering the creek, I passed swamp lilies, fragrant water lilies, and pickerelweed, the latter featuring purple flower spikes.
Rocky Creek runs through a section of the Eglin Air Force Base reservation, and kayakers and other paddlers must have an Eglin recreation permit to explore the river. An annual permit costs $30 and can be purchased online at eglin.isportsman.net.
Here is a description of the creek by Eglin AFB officials: “Rising deep within restricted areas, Rocky Creek is a blackwater stream that winds through some of the Eglin’s reservation’s most pristine hardwood forests. Rocky Creek experiences some of the highest gradients on Eglin, making for a very fast current.”
Paddling upstream on this river is definitely a great workout, and besides all the colorful flora, hopefully you’ll see some wild animals along the way.
On my latest journey, a foot-long fish that darted downstream was the first creature I spotted. The next one was a great blue heron, which I followed upstream and disrupted from resting spots several times. There was also a belted kingfisher that expertly avoided webs spun across the creek by golden silk spiders. On a previous trip, I saw two large wild boars running along a bank on the creek’s east side.
Rocky Creek also is home to some manmade marvels, or at least the remains of them.
For example, after passing underneath the State Road 293 bridge and going around a few creek bends, you’ll see some wreckage of an Air Force Convair F-102 Delta Dagger that crashed on April 5, 1958. This military interceptor plane crashed and was destroyed after a technical malfunction, but the pilot, Capt. Robert J. Welch, ejected safely.
A helicopter later recovered the plane’s engine, but sections of the Delta Dagger remain on both sides of Rocky Creek.
Farther upstream, and past a log I call the “Snake Log” because it often contains a snoozing banded water snake, stands a two-story wooden fort that juts over the water. Someone began building this structure several years ago. It’s an ideal place for a snack break.
Even farther upstream, and a little past the creek’s halfway point between the SR 293 bridge and Reservation Road 219, hang the remnants of an old, metal, 1 1/2-foot-wide military training bridge. I pictured military members running across the bridge in its glory days.
What missions did they go on? What were their hopes and dreams? What were their fears?
Sections of the bridge now dangle from cables that resemble thick vines. The cables still cling to a line that’s attached to trees, including a cypress tree that rises from the east bank and is so big it looks fake. The decaying bridge and cables smell like a rusting tractor in a field.
On my return trip to the state park, while approaching some fallen trees that blocked most of the creek, I spotted the right hind leg of an alligator resting on one of the now-horizontal trees. After rounding a bend, I saw the approximately 6-foot-long gator swimming on my left. It raised its left front leg, apparently to avoid a submerged stump but maybe to wave at me (Aug. 3 was international “Friendship Day,” after all) before submerging.
I made it back to the park shortly after 3 p.m. My round trip took five hours.
I’m already looking forward to another Rocky Creek adventure.
Copies of Collins’ book and many other books were sold, and free lemonade was enjoyed, at the event. A portion of the proceeds from the sales of Collins’ books went to the nonprofit history museum, which is in the Bush House at 198 S. Wilson St.
“Mystery at Green Pond” chronicles the events that led to the shooting and killing of a Confederate Army veteran and his wife in Okaloosa County in 1917.
A jury later convicted brothers Will and Bob Blackwell and a third man, Will Boyd, for the murders. Bob Blackwell was hanged next to the County Courthouse in Crestview in 1920. It was the first hanging in the county.
Will Blackwell died in prison in 1919 before he could be hanged. Boyd was sentenced to life in prison in 1920 but was released in 1929 with a full pardon.
Copies of Collins’ book are not available for purchase at the Crestview History Museum but are available at the Baker Block Museum, 1307B Georgia Ave., Baker.
The book costs $39 plus tax. A portion of the proceeds from the sales of “Mystery at Green Pond” at the Baker Block Museum benefit this nonprofit museum.
