New events, old favorites, in Festival Days

Havre Daily News staff

While traditional mainstays — some with new twists — are set to go off this weekend during Havre Festival Days, new additions also are ready to roll, including back-to-back festivities outside the Havre Eagles Club.

The Eagles Auxiliary of Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge 166 are reviving a burger feed and bingo event Friday night, with proceeds helping pay for the auxiliary’s activities throughout the year.

The burger feed runs from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m., with a half-pound cheeseburger for $6 and a double-patty burger going for $7, both with all condiments available. That is followed by bingo, with an eight-game packet available for $20 and $3 for 5 cards for bonus games. The payout will be $15 for bingo on the regular games and a 50/50 on the bonus games.

Saturday night a local chapter of an international women’s organization is holding a dinner and street dance to fund its work in the community.

The Xi Tau Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi’s event is set to run Saturday from 6 p.m. to midnight outside the Eagles. The meal is $10 and the dance, with music by local band Plowed Under, is $5.

Chapter president Claudene Calvert said the organizers have added a silent auction and a live auction at 8 p.m. due to the number of donations businesses and community members have made to the event, replacing a raffle the chapter had planned to hold.

She said the new event is in addition to an annual craft auction the chapter holds each November to help it provide help to people down on their luck, including buying Christmas gifts for needy families and for care center members who have no families, as well as helping displaced victims of domestic violence and other assistance to local residents.

The Havre-Hill County Library is getting started early, as it does each year, with the Friends of the LIbrary Book Sale starting Thursday and running through Festival Days, and the library also has added a concert with a free performance Thursday by Chris Lee at 7 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.

Along with the book sale, which Friends of the Library use to help keep events like the concert, Story Time, and Lego Time and Robotics at the library free, the library also timed its second annual Gnome Hunt to end during Festival Days.

The Gnome Homecoming, where gnomes put around the city for people to find, will start Friday at 3 p.m. The party will include a raffle for people who made bingo by finding enough gnomes.

The library has been putting out hints on locations on its Facebook page, and people who find gnomes take a selfie with the gnome and mark the location on a bingo card.

Every bingo earned by finding gnomes acts as an entry in the raffle. Finding all the gnomes earns 12 entries in the raffle.

People need to turn in their bingo cards to the library by Thursday.

Knockerball of Missoula also has advertised that it will be holding open play in Havre outside of Sunnyside Intermediate School, near the perennial favorite the 48-hour Softball Tournament at Sixth Avenue Memorial Field, Cost to play is $5. People put on an inflatable sphere with inner handles and shoulder straps and can play games or just have fun. The knockerball allows people to “perfect your rolls, flips, and wheels,” and the sensation is described as “almost defying gravity,” the company’s website says.

Friday night, the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum is closing out its summer speaker series with local historian Jim Magera giving a presentation on how locations in Havre and the area got their names, starting at 7 p.m. at Havre Inn & Suites.

Another event is taking place during Festival Days but a little bit outside of the regular locations. Montana State University-Northern automotive technology teacher Kevin Holzworth said that Sunday people can do some Festival Days off-road four-wheeling at the Fresno off-highway vehicle park, or OHV, 20 miles north of Havre off of Wildhorse Road.

The event starts with people meeting at 11 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 16, at Northern’s Auto Shop at 932 First Street, then traveling to Fresno OHV to use the site, which is “home to 120 acres of off-road trail riding,” Holzworth said.

All off-road vehicles are allowed to use the park which has a “ride at your own risk” policy.

The regular favorites of Festival Days also continue throughout the weekend. Look for a full schedule in a special section in today’s Havre Daily News.