THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 26, 1996 TAG: 9607260424
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY GREG BURT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: KNOTTS ISLAND LENGTH: 69 lines
Cody Burkindine stood bare-chested Thursday looking out over Community Park, imagining the thousands of visitors who this weekend will crowd into the 9-acre plot his grandson Jeremy was busy mowing.
Burkindine, the island community's Citizen of the Year last year, was, like most residents, doing his part to prepare for the community's seventh annual Peach Festival.
He recalled the festival's first year, when more than 12,000 attended. ``You are going to sink the island,'' he remembered people saying.
The 12-year Ruritan is one of 25 active members preparing for the biggest party of the year in the quiet, country community, which straddles the Virginia-North Carolina state line in the middle of Back Bay.
Burkindine hasn't missed a Peach Festival yet. It's all about raising money to meet neighbors' needs.
For island residents who have trouble paying their electric bills, lack food or need heating oil for the winter, the club's community fund is there to help.
This year, the Ruritans also hope to raise $8,000 for a concrete heli-pad. With the island community so far from available emergency medical treatment, residents in need of immediate attention have to be airlifted to hospitals in Virginia Beach or Norfolk for treatment.
Twenty-year Knotts Island resident Royal Hutchinson is another of the Ruritans preparing for the festival. Dressed in blue slacks, a camouflage hat and suspenders, he helped move some of the picnic benches and weeded some of the park's tall grass Thursday.
The real work, however, already had been done and was locked away in the club's refrigerated shed.
There, in large brown boxes, lay 1,700 of the festival's prized possessions: fried peach pies. Hutchinson's wife, Cassie, spent a week putting the small pies together with 10 other women. Although the pies are raw and frozen now, on Saturday and Sunday the popular delicacies will be fried in hot oil, covered with powdered sugar and sold for $1 apiece.
``I made up the recipe myself,'' Cassie Hutchinson said.
A half-mile down the road, the Martin Peach Orchard had stopped picking its peaches to ensure the freshest fruit would be available for the weekend.
David Martin, who runs the 30-acre orchard for his father, said only 10 percent of the peach crop in Georgia and South Carolina survived the cold winter. Martin's orchard, protected by a warm Atlantic breezes, didn't have that problem.
``We probably have the best crop in the state. No doubt about it,'' Martin said, beaming. For the weekend festival he plans to set up his own booth and sell 3,800 pounds of his Biscoe, Georgia Belle and Elberta peaches for 59 cents a pound.
If that isn't cheap enough, festival-goers are invited to wander into the orchard and pick their own for 40 cents a pound.
Peach festivities begin at 10 a.m. Saturday with a parade starting on Ward Road. Lead by Grand Marshall Hal J. Bonney, a retired Norfolk judge, the parade will include floats, a peach princess and a dragster funny car. In the afternoon, entertainment will be served up by Tidewater country music artist John Keeling and an Elvis impersonator. The Flatland Clogging Folk Dance group also will perform.
Beside the peach pies, 120 gallons of Bergey's peach ice cream will be available with 30 other booths selling handmade crafts, T-shirts, crab cakes, peach bread, peach pound cake and peach jams and preserves.
While the locally grown peaches are the prime draw for most festival-goers, Burkindine points out that Ruritans have spent $4,000 on attractions to entertain children. The lineup includes performances by the Spectrum Puppets of Virginia Beach, kids' karaoke, and the Wiggle Worm, a 100-foot-long creature that children can run through. Another new attraction will be the Velcro Wall and a trackless train for kids.
``We hope it will pay off,'' Burkindine said. by CNB