The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show - Prater's Creek Gazette

Today's Weather	The Prater's Creek Gazette " THE UPSTATE'S SHINING COMMUNITY " 5th Issue Spring 2005
The Hillbilly Doppler reports: Partly rowdy with a 100% chance of Raisin Cain.

Prater's Creek Celebrates Polecat Day

By Irving O. Tarbox

SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE

Our little town celebrated Founder’s Day last Thursday with more festivities and fun than any city ten times our size. Founder’s Day, better know as Polecat Day, is the annual celebration of Enos Prater’s declaration that this little parch of Pickens County would be “the greatest town in America!”

It was 1775 when the patriarch camped in the woods, out where Sunset Road is at today. Prater was on a quest to find the perfect place to homestead. It was the dead of winter and Enos had run out of supplies and gunpowder and had only one jug of the moonshine that his family had been making for years. Alone, hungry, and thinking he would freeze to death; Enos downed the contents of the jug and became very disoriented and distraught. He was ready to give up his search and admit defeat when “there appeared a polecat!” as all schoolchildren learn in their history books, “ a great big ‘un! He told me not to give up hope, that I had already found Heaven on Earth. That I was to stay here and homestead. That the crystal pure water from the creek would make the best ‘shine!” Enos never saw the polecat again, and some people speculate as to whether it was a real vision or a moonshine fueled hallucination. That is how the polecat became the symbol of Prater’s Creek. The day’s festivities kicked off with the crowning of Miss Polecat over at the high school auditorium. Bonnie Lou Coolstone won the judges over with her amazing rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers” played on the musical saw. As goes the honor of being Miss Polecat, Bonnie was the grand marshal of the Polecat parade.

That night, back at the auditorium, the school put on a play about how the polecat had helped Enos stay alive by giving him acorns and black raspberries the polecat had stored for the long hard winter.

After the play, Prater’s Creek’s favorite sons, The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show, played a concert. Opening with their song “It’s Sunday In Prater’s Creek”, the band had the audience dancing in the aisles the whole show.