It started as a joke. Now Ball prepares to host inaugural Moon Pie Festival in late March

There’s no connection between the Town of Ball and Moon Pies, other than Mayor Gail Wilking always throws the treat at any parade she is in. Plus, she gives one to students who visit her at Town Hall.

Now, Ball is preparing to host its first festival, the Moon Pie Festival, Saturday, March 23.

Though she is a fan of Moon Pies, she doesn’t eat a lot of them.

“I doubt in the five years that I’ve been here that I’ve eaten two Moon Pies,” she said while laughing.

Chattanooga Bakery in Chattanooga, Tenn., the makers of the snack most associated with the South, and Mardi Gras in Louisiana, has given its blessings to the inaugural festival. So yes, there will be actual Moon Pies and other merchandise available.

The festival will start at 10 a.m. at 100 Municipal Lane where Town Hall is located. The day will include an opening ceremony, a Moon Pie 5K, a Moon Pie Costume Contest, Moon Pie cutouts for photos, a Moon Pie Eating Contest for adults and children, various children’s activities including a Second Line, karaoke, arts and crafts and food vendors and a street dance that will conclude the festival.

While eating Moon Pies, visitors might also be able to listen to songs that have Moon Pie in them, like Big Bill Lister's country hit, "Gimme a RC Cola and Moon Pie", Tracy Byrd's "Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous," Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Moon Pie" and Bobby Mitchell's "The Moon Pie Song."

There’s even an official poster that was originally designed and entered in the Mardi Gras poster contest by a Tioga High School student.

“Well, (Lt. Gov.) Billy Nungesser wanted to do a photo shoot, and he was coming to town that afternoon, and we were going to meet at Quebedeaux’s,” she explained.

So she and Sarah Frost, Ball’s Prosecutorial Clerk and Event Coordinator, chose one of the Mardi Gras posters that featured Ball founder Capt. Chittenden Edwin Ball and altered it to include Moon Pie Festival and the Moon Pie logo. The student who created the original poster will be notified so they can attend and be honored at the festival.

Wilking said they intended to have THS students submit posters just as they did for Mardi Gras. They plan to do that next year.

And the first Moon Pie Queen will officially be crowned.

“I.E., me. I will be the first Moon Pie Queen,” Wilking said.

She explained that It all started off as a joke because everywhere she went, she talked about having a Moon Pie Festival. So one day, one of her staff members walked in her office and crowned her the Moon Pie Queen as all the other staff watched.

It just so happened that Louisiana Municipal Advisory and Technical Services Bureau executive director Cliff Palmer visited her office that day, and he snapped a few photos, one of which was published in the LaMATs newsletter and was shared all over the state and beyond.

What's more, she was officially crowned Moon Pie Queen at a meeting of the North Rapides Business and Industry Alliance, where Palmer shared the photos with other members.

A pageant is in the works for next year, where she plans to hand off the crown to the next queen, Wilking said.

Unfortunately, there won’t be a parade, because March 23 is the Louisiana Primaries Election Day so the roads can’t be blocked off, she said. But Wilking said there will be one next year.

“Everybody’s going wild and we’re getting vendors already filling up,” said Wilking. For vendor information, email moonpiefestivalcommittee@gmail.com.

Unlike neighboring towns like Pollock that has the Dogwood Festival and Colfax, which has the Pecan Festival, Ball has no festival.

For quite some time, Wilking said she has been pushing for Ball to get one. As a parade participant in the Dogwood Festival Parade, Wilking has seen the thousands of people that it attracts.

Wilking was determined to have a festival so once she returned to Ball, she called her staff in and told them that Ball was going to have a festival - an Azalea Festival.

So they chose the date originally for the Azalea Festival just out of the blue.

Then Wilking rode in another town's festival parade.

“No matter what parade it is, I always throw Moon Pies. And that’s in promotion for our Mardi Gras Parade, because I love Mardi Gras,” she said. “I was standing there and I had trinkets and I had beads and Moon Pies. And I looked out and I saw all these kids hollering for Moon Pies.”

When she saw the big smiles on the children who got Moon Pies, that’s when she said the Lord put the idea in her head.

“Moon Pies. There’s your festival. That came in my head. And I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus!,’” she said. “’Thank you, Jesus! You just gave me my festival.’”

So once she returned to her office, she told her staff that they had a festival – a Moon Pie Festival. As they researched, they found that there are no other Moon Pie festivals other than the RC Cola & Moon Pie Festival in Bell Buckle, Tenn., that’s held on the third Saturday in June every year.

Eating Moon Pies and drinking RC Cola together has been a Southern tradition for many years, and she is working to get RC Cola on board for the new festival, but her sole focus is on Moon Pies.

Everyone who has heard about it is excited and tells her they can’t wait for the Moon Pie Festival.

“It is going wild,” she said. “I’m so proud. Everywhere I go, people ask, ‘Where are the Moon Pies?’ This is really big throughout the whole state. Everybody that talks about it laughs. They have the biggest smile and say, ‘Well, Mrs. Gail’s got a Moon Pie Festival.’”

This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: Ball to host inaugural Moon Pie Festival in late March