Locals flock to ?Wings in the Spring?

By Brooks Taylor, Mt. Pleasant News

Although people may not have flown in to Tuesday night?s ?Wings in the Spring,? several hundred area residents flocked to Mt. Pleasant?s Central Park for the Main Street Mt. Pleasant-sponsored chicken-wing cooking event.

Downtown was alive, many of those attending agreed.

Lisa Oetken, director of Main Street Mt. Pleasant, was ecstatic with the turnout. ?There wasn?t much else going on in Mt. Pleasant on a Tuesday night, so we decided to throw a party,? she quipped. ?I think we have a good crowd. I see all age groups represented. There are a lot of parents pushing their kids in buggies.?

One of those pushing his child in a buggy was Mt. Pleasant chiropractor and Chamber of Commerce board member Matt Donnolly.

?It?s a great evening with a great turnout. Both the food and beverages are outstanding,? he summed up.

A good evening it was. With temperatures in the low 70s, accompanied by a light wind, the lines were long at both the wings and beverage vendors.

Nichole Faul, a student at Mt. Pleasant High School, was one of three generations of her family attending. Faul said she enjoys attending events in Central Park but the attraction Tuesday night was her father, one of numerous contestants in the wing-cooking contest.

?I like wings and hot things,? she said with a smile. ?I try to come to things downtown, but a lot of times it depends on what day it is.?

Her grandfather, Max Faul of Dallas City, Ill., was on hand largely to help his son. ?I really wouldn?t have to be here, he does a good job by himself.?

Curtis Faul was competing in the wings contest for the first time. He said his wings were coated with a buffalo sauce, dipped in a flour mixture with several ingredients that he didn?t want to give away.

C. Faul, who admitted he enjoyed cooking, said he always wanted to enter a wings contest and couldn?t pass up this opportunity.

His only problem was deciding on how many wings to bring. ?They said to bring enough to feed 200 to 300 people, so I brought 30 pounds,? he noted.

Louis Brucker, a distributor with Fleck Sales of Cedar Rapids, had six different varieties of adult beverages to wash down those wings. ?I have everything from the new seltzers to hard sodas to seasonal beers,? he reported. Brucker said he was impressed with the turnout, having also had his beverages at last fall?s sister event ??Pints in the Park.?

Salem?s Kurt Garretson, of East Grove Farms, rural Salem, had a new wine for customers ? Bumbleberry Mead. He said the wine was made from elderberries, aromiaberries and grapes. By 6:30 p.m., Garretson was already pouring from the third gallon of wine.

He said attendance was a little slow at first (he arrived an hour early) but picked up quickly. ?Things always seem to go better in the spring,? Garretson remarked. ?Business picked up quickly and has been steady ever since.?

Oetken said one of the goals of the event was to attract a younger crowd to the park. ?We wanted to do something that really pinpointed a younger demographic ? young couples and such,? she said. ?We also have people who have become regulars at a lot of our downtown events, and with a lot of our breweries (for downtown events) coming back, there are things returning to our downtown that people have enjoyed before.?

She also noted that Main Street Mt. Pleasant celebrates its 15th anniversary today. Things are good in downtown Mt. Pleasant, she said proudly.

?Retailers in our downtown want to showcase the downtown and all it has to offer,? she remarked. ?And we are up for that challenge. It?s an exciting time to be in Mt. Pleasant.?

Hosted in conjunction with ?Wings in the Spring? was the kickoff of the Market on Main, a farmers? market in which various produce and craft items are sold.