EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WEHT) – After the 100th Fall Festival wrapped up last night, West Side Nut Club members spent the night and Sunday morning cleaning up from the week-long festival.
The only type of foot traffic on West Franklin Street Sunday morning was that of West Side Nut Club members walking while sweeping, spraying water and picking up after six days of people walking from booth to booth.
“It takes us all,” said Jason Lewis, who runs the cleanup for the club. “We’ve been doing this for 100 years now, so we’ve got it down to a science.”
The cleaning started Saturday night, and continued Sunday morning with booths removed, trash picked up, and the streets and sidewalks cleaned.
“They got all their stuff out by 10, we’ve been cleaning the streets with street sweepers, throwing out all the trash off the sidewalks into the street on Franklin Street and the surrounding streets,” said Lewis.
The clean up follows the nut club’s 100th year of holding the Fall Festival. Members say ticket sales for carnival rides were up from 2019 and many booths sold out of food daily during the week. Ryan Beck of the West Side Nut Club says some of the increase is due to demand after the pandemic forced last year’s festival to be canceled.
“I had a lot of people come up to me this week on the street saying, ‘We’re thankful to be able to do this again.’ and they were excited to come down and see people they haven’t seen in a long time,” he said.
It only took a little more than 12 hours and the West Franklin was cleaned up by early Sunday afternoon. Officials say planning is already underway for next year. Beck says the club’s thankful for the community’s response to this year’s festival.
“We can’t do without the community coming down and spending their hard-earned money, that allows us to give the money back to nonprofits,” he said.
(This story was originally published on October 10, 2021)
