Video: Fly Wheel Festival draws huge crowds to Houston

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HOUSTON, Miss. (WCBI) — Three thousand people descended on Houston Saturday, for the semi-annual Fly Wheel Festival.

They are a familiar site at the Fly Wheel Festival with ia distinctive sound. Some Engines can still pump water.

Houston has had a long history running this festival, though it didn’t start here.

Harry Collins is with the Mississippi Valley Fly Wheelers Club.

“This originally was in Grenada,” he says. “And then the mayor of Houston about 30-something years ago, he was an engine man and he said we’ve got a park, if you all come to Houston and we’ll have it in the park and so it moved to Houston and it’s just been here ever since, Collins notes.

Bobby Warren is a fly wheel enthusiast from Monroe County. He says there is something special about these vintage engines.

“They’re old. Old engines, some of them are over a hundred years old, He boasts. “They last for ever, like this six horse engine back here you can put a six horse engine now in your pocket. They don’t last near as long,” Warren explains.

The Houston Fly Wheel Festival has become popular that they actually hold it twice a year, in the spring and the fall.

“Houston is just a small hometown nice knit community. And everybody wanted to do another show, so we do one in the fall. It’s much more low key,” says Collins.

And another attraction at the Fly Wheel Festival is the Chickasaw County Heritage Museum which has old farm equipment that neatly ties into the Fly Wheel Festival. Lamar Beaty is Chairman of the Board of the Chickasaw County Historical and Geological Society.

“Most of things that we have probably in our agricultural collection probably date back to the days when they had flywheels. And some of it even before they had the tractors and fly wheels,” Beaty says.