“I think it should be a whole weekend long,” the Lewiston woman said. “It should just be nonstop. That’s how we plan to do it.”
She was off to a good start. With a few hundred others Friday night, Katye and her husband, Ray, were at Veterans Memorial Park getting a jump on Independence Day celebrations and helping to raise funds for another pair of festivals.
Called The Fuse, the Friday-night bash got underway with live music and dancing. Lots and lots of dancing.
“I love this,” declared an almost breathless Gary Morrison. “I just love coming to Lewiston to dance.”
Dance he did. When the first note of the first song was struck, the Rumford man was up in front of the stage shaking his groove thang. Ten songs later, he was still there, jumping, weaving, throwing his hands in all directions. Morrison danced all night long, sometimes with a companion, sometimes without.
“I love to dance,” he declared during brief rests. As though that wasn’t self-evident.
Also in a dancing mood were Ginger Sherman and Lionel Audette, a couple who likewise took very few breaks from the dance floor.
“We love this,” Sherman said. “We’re having a great time.”
She looked over at her companion and smiled. “He’s 91 years old, you know.”
It’s true. Lionel Audette this year will witness his 91st Fourth of July and, from what most people have seen, he’s danced through just about all of them.
“We see him everywhere,” Vachon said. “He’s always out there and he’s always dancing.”
It was a day short, but the Friday-night festival had all the signs of a Fourth of July celebration. There were U.S. flags on sticks, flags on T-shirts and one digital flag beamed onto the bricks of what used to be the Libby Mill.
There was beer and fried food. There were sparklers and loud music. Everywhere you looked, someone was dancing and Vachon didn’t plan to be an exception.
“Oh, yeah. We’re going to dance,” she said. “I just need to take my boots off.”
When it was time — the band was playing “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend” — her husband just had to take off his leather coat and find a place to set his beer. Then the Vachons were dancing, too.
The festival was an attempt to raise money for the Liberty Festival and for the Balloon Festival in August. The latter in particular needs to come up with thousands of dollars to replace 26,000 feet of heavy-duty copper power cords stolen from a storage trailer in Auburn last winter.
It was not immediately known how much had been raised. The bash was still going on full-bore long after dark. On stage, The Veggies were replaced by Cold Blue Steel. In the brief span between the bands, Morrison sat at a table trying to catch his breath. Maybe he’d like to sit out a song or two?
Nope.
“I’m ready to go again right now,” he said.
A few seconds later, he resumed dancing.
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