Tamale Festival plans have planners excited

Preparations are well under way for the first Diboll Tamale Festival, coming up Saturday- Sunday, March 15-16 at the Lottie and Arthur Temple Civic Center.

Civic Center Director Lance Moore says the response so far to the festival has been enthusiastic, with vendors coming from throughout Texas and from Louisiana, as well as one from Hackensack, N.J. That vendor likes to vacation in East Texas, so the festival is a match made in heaven.

Moore credits a lot of the early momentum to a Texas Monthly magazine feature on Lufkin. They "piggy-backed" the feature with a small ad about the festival and responses started coming in.

The festival will include a tamale cook-off and tamale eating contest. There is no entry fee for either event but winning will pay $200. Tamales will be sold in abundance at the festival, most of which will be from local families and businesses, and tamale making will be taught. Lots of other types of food will be available, from barbecue all the way to Greek.

Why a tamale festival?

"Tamales are fun," Moore said, plus, this will be the first festival in Texas dedicated to the tamale. Other festivals have tamale-eating contests, but the state has lacked, until now, a festival dedicated to this particular culinary art form. California seems to be the center of the tamale festival universe, in the United States, at least. Los Angeles alone has four.

Moore estimates that Diboll is a Hispanic-majority town now, but the festival is not intended as an ethnic celebration. Live music of all types - gospel, blues, "Americana" and folk -- will be featured, as well as Tejano. The tamale-making classes are intended for non-Hispanic festival goers, too. Most Hispanics, Moore said, either already know how to make them or know they don't want to learn.

A carnival also will be part of the festival. Wagner's Carnivals will bring 15 rides, eight of them suited for young children, and 12 midway games. Costumed characters also will be in abundance, including Smokey Bear, the Chick-Fil-A chicken and P.B. the Pushbroom. Moore is trying for others, but no one has a tamale costume.

While he is grateful to Texas Monthly for its early boost, Moore notes an error in the upcoming issue's description of the Tamale Festival. It describes him as a "former director" of the Blueberry Festival in Nacogdoches, which, he said, is an error. He was once involved with that festival, serving as Main Street events coordinator, but the festival is run by the chamber of commerce there and has no single director.

Moore hopes the festival will become an annual event; all the publicity calls it the "first annual" Tamale Festival. Another one will be held in 2009 for sure, he said, because one year does not provide enough information to judge. The success of the second festival will determine whether there will be a third.