Moonshine Festival Guide

53rd Annual

MOUNTAIN MOONSHINE FESTIVAL

National Moonshiners Hall of Fame Est. 2013

Jacky Jones, Banks Septic, RCL Components

Oct. 23, 24 and 25 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Byrds Mini Storage, Mathis Grading, Grogan Waste, Larry Evans Trucking, United Community Bank, Evans Garage & Wrecker Service, Jasper Grading & Pipeline

Held at the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame and Dawsonville Main Street Park A Supplement to

TABLE OF CONTENTS SPONSORS.......................................................4 GRAND MARSHAL DAVID RAGAN. . ......................6 MEMORIES OF THE MOONSHINE FEST..................8 LEGACY OF THE MOONSHINE FEST....................12 K.A.R.E. FOR KIDS CHRISTMAS APPLICATION.....15

MOONSHINE FESTIVAL 2020 SCHEDULE FRIDAY, OCT. 23

- Festival: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- Car Show: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- Swap Meet: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- Moonshine Run: Departing from Bearden Funeral Home at 9:30 a.m.

SATURDAY, OCT. 24

- Festival: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- Parade: 9 a.m.

- Car Show: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- Swap Meet: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

SUNDAY, OCT. 25

- Festival: 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

- Car Show: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- Swap Meet: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Pets and golf carts are not permitted at the festival.

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MOONSHINE 2020

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DAVID RAGAN Grand Marshal of the 53rd annual Mountain Moonshine Festival Longtime NASCAR Driver David Ragan is Grand Marshal for the 53rd annual Mountain Moonshine Festival.

A current NASCAR driver, Ragan was born in Unadilla, Ga., and started his professional racing career at age 12. Like Bill and Chase Elliott, Ragan’s father, Ken, was also a professional racer.

After competing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series for 14 years, Ragan partially retired at the end of the 2019 season but raced part time during the 2020 season.

His career is best remembered by his 2007 Rookie of the Year Trophy and his two career racing victories at the 2011 Coke Zero 400 in Daytona and the 2013 Aaron’s 499 in Talladega.

Ragan lives in North Carolina with his wife Jacquelyn and their daughters, Julia and Meredith.

As the Grand Marshal does every year, Ragan will lead the Saturday morning parade that precedes the event’s opening ceremonies. Short-track racing legend Bud Lunsford was last year’s Grand Marshal.

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Over half a century

and still going strong Locals share early Mountain Moonshine Festival memories

By Erica Schmidt eschmidt@dawsonnews.com In the early 1960s, Dawson County local Fred Goswick set up a table off the Dawsonville square and began selling his handmade wood carvings to tourists that came through the city. As the years went on, friends and neighbors gradually joined him with tables of their own wares, and bit by bit the annual Fall Festival was born.

Over the years the festival would evolve, growing more and more until it eventually became the festival everyone knows today: the Mountain Moonshine Festival.

Fred’s son Scott Goswick explained that his father originally started selling wood carvings and hand carved gun stocks that he would make while at his job with the state highway.

“He worked with the state highway and the first day on the job it was raining, so he said, ‘How do we get paid if it’s raining?’ and they said rain, sleet or snow you have to show up and if it’s really bad weather you just won’t go out,” Goswick said. “So he’d already been carving some, and the second day on the job he brought some wood with him — and made about as much from carving as he did through the job.”

Scott Goswick said that when his father decided to sell his carvings, he just borrowed a table from someone and set up off the city square. As Fred Goswick repeated this each year and began seeing success in the venture, other locals saw and wanted in.

“It was during a time of recession in Dawson, and the goal was to help other people bring in a little extra money,” Scott Goswick said. “It was all local people and he didn’t charge for tables, he just wanted to help.”

Lloyd Crane was the Director at Veterans Memorial Park during the early days of the fall festival, and says he recalls many years of selling barbecue at the 8

MOONSHINE 2020

festival to help bring in more funds for the park.

“If it hadn’t been for the festival I don’t know what we’d have done at the park,” Crane said. “And it was a family affair; everyone would come out to help.”

Local resident Judy Harris was also in attendance at the original festivals, and recalls selling hot dogs with her aunt on the corner of the town square.

“My aunt and I set up and sold hot dogs, coffee and Coca-Cola,” Harris said.

“People would drive by and order through the window, drive around the courthouse and we’d have it ready for them by the time they came back past.

And I remember we sold so many hotdogs that I saved up enough to buy a pretty coat.”

The original festivals were much more informal than those of later years, with no one person or group in charge, but instead everyone pitched in to help with setup and cleanup.

“There was an honest innocence in those first years of the festival,” Scott Goswick said. “Whoever got there first would just set up wherever they wanted and people cleaned up after themselves, and we’d borrow tables from the school to set up on.”

The original festivals took place over three consecutive Sundays, and usually locals would go out to the festival after church.

“In the early years it never rained out the festival,” Goswick said. “We’d go out and start after church on Sundays, and it was mostly locals.”

One of the largest differences from the early festivals to the festivals of today was that there was no organized car show or live entertainment, but locals would show up unofficially with their cars and their instruments.

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“Guys always had musical instruments in their cars, so music and dancing would just randomly start up,” Goswick said. “And in the early years there was no official car show, but since they were pretty days people would get out their old family cars and just drive around in them. So it was all unplanned, off the cuff, and just worked.”

Another big difference from modern day festivals was that city streets didn’t shut down, but instead visitors would drive past in their cars, stopping at booths on their way past.

“The roads used to not shut down; people would space their tables out and shoppers would just drive past,” Harris said. “They’d just roll their windows down and drive slowly, but we didn’t really have any traffic backups.”

Goswick said that as more booths were added each year it eventually started getting too big for his father to organize.

“The festival started getting too big, so Dad went to the booster club,” Goswick said. “The booster club took over and was really birthed out of the festival.”

Crane was one of the booster club members who helped to organize and operate the festival.

“I would usually end up helping direct traffic,” Crane said. “So I’d be helping with that and still selling the barbecue too.”

Crane and Harris said that renaming the fall festival, the “Moonshine Festival”, was a nod to the moonshining that took place in Dawson County, which wasn’t something locals ever felt ashamed of.

“I’m not ashamed of the moonshining,” Harris said. “We would have starved without the moonshining business; a lot of people in the community wouldn’t have gotten by.”

The modern-day Moonshine Festival includes a parade, live entertainment, an official car show and dozens of vendors, and lasts for a whole weekend rather than being spread out over several weeks.

“I wish we could slow down a little bit and take a step back,” Harris said. “But those of us who grew up here remember when it was like the whole county was family, and I wouldn’t trade my time growing up here for anything.”

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Christmas for children in need:

the legacy of Moonshine Fest

By Erica Schmidt eschmidt@dawsonnews.com While most people in the North Georgia area have at least heard about the Mountain Moonshine Festival or maybe have driven through Dawsonville while it was in full swing, not everyone knows the true impact the festival has on local children in the community.

According to K.A.R.E. for Kids president Rhonda Goodwin and Executive Director Tiffany Buchan the true impact of the three day festival goes way beyond the weekend it takes place, impacting hundreds of families in need each year that would otherwise be going into the holiday season with few resources to provide presents for their little ones.

Last year, according to K.A.R.E for Kids, the organization was able to provide Christmas gifts for 650 local children. The money for those presents were raised through donations to K.A.R.E. for Kids, yes, but the bulk of those presents are a direct result of the Moonshine Festival.

“All funds from the festival go to help the children,” Goodwin said. “Our main focus is brightening the lives of the children at Christmas.”

The gifts are given to local children depending on their need. Goodwin and Buchan conduct one-on-one interviews with the families who apply for Christmas gifts and then shop for the presents each child wants or needs.

“We interview the families and then start shopping, and then families come back to pick the gifts up,” Buchan said.

Not only are the funds for the Christmas gift program raised in Dawson County through the Moonshine Festival, but Buchan said that the organization also makes sure to keep the proceeds in the community.

“We shop at the local Walmart and give part back to the local Boy Scouts and police who help with security,” Buchan said. “But we make sure the money stays in the county, and the children who receive the gifts are Dawson County children too.”

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Children from newborns, up to seniors in high school can apply for the Christmas gifts. K.A.R.E. for Kids starts accepting applications and conducting interviews the week after the festival. All of the money spent on the gifts comes from either donations or the festival, which makes the festival very important to not only the organization, but also to the children that receive gifts.

“We get no government funding, so it’s one hundred percent funded through the festival and donations,” Goodwin said.

Goodwin and Buchan said the work they do is its own reward, and they each have countless stories of specific children they’ve gotten to help through the Christmas gift program.

“It’s the grandparents that really get me,” Buchan said. “Like we had one grandma come in with her grandchildren and she had a 35-year-old disabled daughter at home too, but she was never down about anything; she was just always happy.”

Goodwin said one story that makes her tear up every time she tells it, is the story of a boy who couldn’t afford shoes for school.

“A school counselor called me about this boy whose classmates had noticed he always wore dress shoes to gym class and said he needed new shoes,” Goodwin said. “So we got his shoe size and I went out to the school to give him a new pair of shoes.”

The counselor called the boy into the office, and Goodwin said that when he took off the worn dress shoes his toes were crumpled from being constantly squeezed into the same pair of shoes that were too small for him.

“His face just lit up like a lightbulb when we gave him the new shoes,” Goodwin said. “He was just so excited.”

One goal of the Christmas gift program is to make each child feel special by tailoring the Christmas gifts to each specific child’s wishes.

“We get very specific details for each child, so if red is their favorite color they get red,” Goodwin said. “We don’t want to be generic, and we get to really know the families.”

Buchan said that every year they get complaints about the traffic in Dawsonville during the festival, but if citizens knew the cause it supports, she knows they would feel differently about it.

“If people just knew why we did this, they could put up with the traffic for one MOONSHINE 2020

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weekend a year,” Buchan said. “It just takes us all working together; we’re doing this because we care.”

K.A.R.E. for Kids is always accepting donations, both monetary donations and unwrapped, new Christmas gifts for the Christmas program.

“We keep the heart a part of our mission, so we put up star trees in the community at places like Walmart, United Bank, Regions and many more,” Buchan said. “We wanna share the blessing of giving, so you can sponsor a child or donate items.”

No matter how big or small the donation, every dollar makes a difference, according to Goodwin.

“There was one time an older lady came into our office and said she wanted to make a donation,” Goodwin said. “She pulled out five one-dollar bills, and even though that was all she could afford that’s still one of my most memorable donations we’ve gotten.”

To donate to K.A.R.E. for Kids, you can visit the organization’s website at http://www.kareforkids.org/ or mail a check to P.O. Box 211.

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November Hours Fridays: 4:00 pm – 10:00pm Saturdays: 10:00 am – 10:00pm Sundays: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Fall Activities Include · Towering Goat Walk · Kiddie Maze · Improved! Tire Mountain

· New! Jumpy Pad · New! Gem Mining · New! Gift Shop

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K.A.R.E. for Kids, Inc. Christmas Application

If you have any questions concerning K.A.R.E. for Kids Please call 706-216-KARE (5273) or email us at KAREFORKIDSCHRISTMAS@GMAIL.COM Will be accepting applications for assistance for the 2020 Christmas season at: Monday, November 2 6pm to 8pm Wednesday, November 4 Noon to 4pm Saturday, November 7 Noon to 6pm Monday, November 9 6pm to 8pm Wednesday, November 11 Noon to 4pm Saturday, November 14 Noon to 6pm

Monday, November 16 6pm to 8pm Wednesday, November 18 Noon to 4pm Saturday, November 21 Noon to 6pm Monday, November 30 6pm to 8pm Wednesday, December 2 Noon to 4pm Saturday, December 5 Noon to 6pm

You must bring copies of each of the following with you for us to accept your application: • GA drivers license OR state ID • Proof of residency (utility bill, lease agreement, property tax statement, tax return) • School report card (if child is of school age) or birth certificate if not school age • Documentation from day care or pre-school in the county • Income verification for last two months for all persons employed in the household.

• Court documents if you are the guardian of the child.

You will need to know: • Your child’s exact clothes and shoe sizes • Specific clothing needs for your child • 3 specific items that your child would like for Christmas (1 gift under $50 and two gifts under $20) In order to qualify for assistance, you must meet ALL of the following requirements: • You must live full-time in Dawson County along with your child that you are applying for assistance for. Your child must live with you.

• If your child is school aged, they must attend Dawson County schools.

• Your child must be school age or younger.

• You must not receive assistance from any other agency for this Christmas season.

WE WILL NO LONGER TAKE APPLICATIONS AFTER DECEMBER 5 MOONSHINE 2020

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Residential & Commercial New Installation Service Repair & Replacement Specialist Thank you to our community for always supporting us. As lifelong resident of Dawson County, this recogniton is such an honor. We look forward to continuing to serve you.

- Tim & Lindsay White