The Grand Bay Watermelon festival kicks off today in Grand Bay. The annual festival celebrates the watermelon and is back for its forty ninth year. Festival attendees can expect plenty of food and entertainment and of course watermelon. There will even be a professional fireworks show on the fourth. Patty Tripp is the director of the Grand Bay Watermelon Festival. She said there will be free watermelon for festival attendees.
“We celebrate the watermelon,” said Tripp. “At the festival, we have all the free sliced ice cold watermelon that you can eat. And we have arts and crafts vendors. We have food vendors, we have a car show. [And] We have pretty baby contest.”
Tripp says the festival has been bringing the community together for almost fifty years.
“It was 1929 a group of people got together to celebrate the watermelon and watermelon growers,” she said. “And so they decided to have a festival. And they had a queen's pageant, and they had all kinds of events, entertainment and stuff like that. And then it continued off and own that didn't have an annual it was just whenever they could do it. And then 49 years ago when the Jaycees took it over, they started doing it annually.”
Festivities kick off today at three p-m and again tomorrow at ten a-m.
