30th Annual Heritage Festival features artists, musicians

Vendors and performers taught children how to play and make new games and crafts.

By Esten Hurtle

Published Sept. 18, 2007

Last weekend, Nifong Park entered a time warp. Rope tricks, blacksmiths and roots music can only mean one thing: The 30th Annual Heritage Festival brought 19th-century culture to Columbia, as well as a variety of activities, crafts, foods and music of antiquity.

The park was covered with local vendors selling items including beeswax and flutes. The crafts were all handmade, and some vendors made their goods at the event itself.

Michael Williams, who sold blades he had crafted from stone using similar techniques to those used by American Indians' hundreds of years ago, had a simple explanation of his decision to create these pieces.

"I could never find any," he said.

Bob Ehrenberger, another vendor, hammered hot iron over an anvil to create a variety of goods. Ehrenberger said he started blacksmithing to give his son practical, hands-on teaching in his home-school program.

Many of those exhibiting their work are long-time patrons of the festival.

"We've been here at least 15 years," patron Selma Reese said.

Reese's booth contained a wooden loom, on which her husband John Hall was weaving a rug as she sold others built on similar looms. Reese saw Columbia's support of the Heritage Festival as a byproduct of its strong artistic community.

"Columbia is very active in the arts and keeping the heritage crafts going," Reese said.

Despite the large number of vendors at the festival, it was not simply a large crafts fair. Bands played roots, bluegrass and other traditional styles on three stages.

The Ironweed Bluegrass Band took the stage with a worn guitar, a violin passed from father to son and a large upright bass. Banjoist Dierik Leonhard said the festival seemed like the natural place to be.

"It fits with this style of music," Leonhard said.

A brass band played the same stage after The Ironweed Bluegrass Band, and just a few feet away, Pablo Baum sold and played handmade American Indian flutes.

"The music is centered around traditional entertainment," Reese said.

One word can describe the festival's sampling of history: eclectic. Here, the past was not something to simply hear about. It existed in a framework that even children enjoyed.

A section of the festival was exclusively dedicated to activities for the younger patrons. Emma Tanner, 7, of Columbia, especially looked forward to making a candle and playing a game that simulated milking a cow.

"Those are my two favorites I have to do every year," Tanner said.

Festival participant Mary Lee, also known as Polecat Annie, focused her efforts on teaching kids to look for different ways to enjoy themselves in the modern world with juggling and toys such as ribbon sticks.

"I'm teaching kids how to have fun without batteries," Lee said.

Nearly every aspect of the festival highlighted simplicity in entertainment.

Randy Erwin embodied this ideal with rope-tricks and guitars made from cigar boxes. Children gathered around him as he spun the rope around his head and body, without letting it touch either. Erwin's outlook on the festival was positive.

"It's a nice festival," Erwin said. "It's just about the right size, and everyone treats you well. You can't ask for more than that."