After 41 straight years of operation, Gainesboro’s annual Poke Sallet Festival has been cancelled due to the coronavirus.
This year’s festival was set to begin on May 1, but Jackson County Mayor Randy Heady said county officials had a responsibility to protect the community.
“The unknown that surrounds us with the COVID-19 virus is just scary,” Heady said. “Right now we can’t predict. That is the first weekend in May, and here we are in the last week of March, so we have four weeks between. We had to do what was pertinent and seemed like the responsible thing to do.”
Heady said trying to reschedule the festival would be difficult due to conflicts to other events and how unpredictable the virus is.
“My hope. My prayer is that we bring this back next year,” Heady said. “We had to take a year off, and let it go down in history as a time when we did what we had to do.”
Jackson County’s Poke Sallet Festival was the longest running in Tennessee. The festival included food vendors, live music and events such as turtle racing.
“Every year me and my wife would always come and walk around and check out all the vendors they have,” Heady said. “One of the biggest things that I will miss is the Cattleman’s rib-eye steak sandwich. It is kinda of a tradition of theirs to come down once, if not twice,”
Heady said he hopes next year’s Poke Sallet Festival will be a go, scheduled now for Mother’s Day weekend.
