Announcing the 7th Internationally Acclaimed
Independence Fruitcake Festival
PEACE, LOVE AND FRUITCAKE!
December 10, 2011 at 6 PM
INDEPENDENCE LEGION HALL

PRESS RELEASE                NOVEMBER 16, 2011                                                    

SEVENTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED INDEPENDENCE FRUITCAKE FESTIVAL

Find those old bell bottoms because it is back to the sixties for this year’s Fruitcake Festival. Start practicing your dance moves, warm up your vocal cords, or lip synch to your favorite songs from the “Summer of  Love”.

Coming to Independence on December 10th is the latest incarnation of the annual Fruitcake Festival, “Peace, Love and Fruitcake”. Talents that were never seen before were revealed at last year’s Festival. We’ve got the stage, so bring on your talent. However, nothing on stage can ever upstage the centerpiece of this celebration, the fruitcake. Although there may be some of those fruitcakes on stage performing, most of them will be displayed on the long tables in anticipation of their review by seasoned judges that employ mechanical, empirical and philosophical techniques to select fruitcakes in the categories of oldest, travelled the farthest, best of theme, most solids, and judges’ award.

New this year will be the soup kitchen sponsored by the Carson & Colorado Railway. Five dollars buys you the best bowl of soup you’ve ever had. Add the free eggnog and slices of fruitcake and you’ve got a complete meal. This event could rival Woodstock. Don’t miss it.

To enter the Talent Show or attend the Festival, you must bring a fruitcake or eggnog.

Location: American Legion Hall, Independence, California
Date and Time: December 10, 2011 at 6 PM
Telephone number: 760-878-8084
Email Address: nancymas @ qnet.com

INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE
JULY 4, 2011

                                                                                                                                                              photo: RD Masters
Parade Theme
"Passport to Freedom"
Get to Independence Any Way You Can!
Hike, Bike, Drive, Fly or use Teleportation

EVENTS

July 3rd Music and Dance in Dehy Park 8:00 PM until Midnight
July 4^th opens with Flag Raising Ceremony at 6:15 AM
Pancake Breakfast 6:30-9:00 AM in Dehy Park
Have Breakfast at the Park!
4K/10k Run/Walk registration at 6:30 AM and starts at 7 AM
Arts and Crafts Show is at 9 AM on the Courthouse Lawn
Parade begins at 10 AM and goes both North and South on Highway 395
Pie Social is at Noon at Dehy Park, followed by the Old Time Kid’s Games at 2 PM
Deep Pit Barbeque is from 4 – 6:30 PM at Dehy Park
Grand Finale Fireworks Display begins at dusk at the Independence Airport
 

Visit Independence, CA on Father’s Day Weekend for the
INDEPENDENCE FISHING DERBY
Saturday      June 18, 2011

Weigh-in 10:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m. at Dehy Park
Awarding of Prizes begins at 4:00 p.m. at Dehy Park

This is a FREE Blind Bogey Event…
Lots of Prizes & Live Music at the Weigh-in
Fishing Fun for the Whole Family!!

Sponsored by:
County of Inyo
Friends of the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery
Independence Civic Club

INDEPENDENCE FISHING DERBY RULES

Registration and weigh-in will be from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m only.
Line will close at 3 p.m.
Only participants in line by 3 p.m. will be included in the Derby.
Awarding of prizes will begin at 4:00 p.m.
Only one 1st Place prize will be awarded to any contestant, regardless of categories entered.
In case of a tie for one prize, names will be placed in a hat and a winner drawn.
All fish must be loose in individual bags when presented at the Weigh-in Table (one fish per bag--bags will be provided).
Only participants who have registered and weighed in fish are eligible to win prizes.

PRIZE CATEGORIES
All categories will have both a Junior Prize and a Adult Prize.
(Junior contestants are those who have not reached their 16th birthday.)

BLIND BOGEY
HEAVIEST TROUT (1st, 2nd, 3rd Place)
HEAVIEST TROUT STRINGER (1st, 2nd, 3rd Place)
LARGEST WILD TROUT
LARGEST CATFISH
LARGEST BLUEGILL

Don’t forget to visit the historic Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery while you’re here!

THE 2010 (B.C.) INDEPENDENCE FRUITCAKE FESTIVAL IS NOW ANCIENT HISTORY
FRUITCAKE ~ THE SACRED FOOD OF THE PHARAOHS
Legion Hall    Independence, California   January 23, 2010
  ---  AND THE MUMMIFICATION OF THE FRUITCAKE PHARAOH  ---
 
Fruitcake lovers from the Lower Nile and the far reaches of the unexplored world
may gain entry to the Royal Pyramid by presenting a fruitcake offering to the Pharaoh.
WARNING: By the Pharaoh's royal decree, fruitcakeless imposters will be denied entry.
They will then be sacrificed, embalmed, mummified and their hearts offered to Anubis.
 

THE 2010 INDEPENDENCE FRUITCAKE FESTIVAL IS SPONSORED BY THE ILLUMINUTTI

Fruitcakes in Space
Fruitcake or Eggnog is required for admission
COME AS YOU ARE NOT

   

We have a limited number of these spectacular T-shirts.
CivicShirts@InyoCounty.Info
The long-sleeve black shirts come in sizes
S, M, L, X-l, XX-L and XXX-L.
If you can't make it to the Festival but you want a shirt,
send us an email followed by a check to
Independence Civic Club Tee Shirts
P.O. Box 482, Independence, CA 93526
We'll mail you the shirt. Add $5 for foreign orders.
All shirts are $30.
Profits go into our charitable fund.

 
The Fruitcake King
The 2007 Fruitcake Festival Video
The article the Perpetual Fruitcake King will forever regret
Fruitcake Fest Sets Sights on Trifecta
 Inyo Register, Bishop California       December 15, 2007
It’s true. The Fruitcake Festival is no longer “our little secret” in the Owens Valley, where it’s sort of the valley’s version of crazy Aunt Nancy living in the attic that no one really wants to talk about. The twittering is the result of some national media attention for the rather odd festival, which celebrates the annoying mixture of cheap cake, chunks of cast-off dried fruit, almost-rotten nuts, and enough booze and other preservatives to make a mummy blush that is also known as fruitcake.

California Festival Celebrates Fruitcake
Weekend Edition Sunday     December 16, 2007
National Public Radio and the Independence Civic Club's
Nancy Masters get together for this hilarious interview.

Listeners Defend the Fruitcake
Weekend Edition Sunday     December 23, 2007
Our story last week about a California fruitcake festival brought letters from listeners who love and defend the much-maligned fruitcake. NPR's Liane Hansen reads a few of these letters, and then hears from one listener who was moved to song.

OUR SCHEDULE OF EVENTS Click on the image to view our local schedule of events.

---

    Independence Update   

Our very own disaster flick is in the making!
Latest update Sunday Nov 30 7:45 PST
Fire, Flood and Mud
It's been a tough 371 days in Independence
and it looks like rain...
Click F11 for fullscreen; F11 again and esc to exit.
Right mouse click for menu and quality settings.


Special Report
HOLDING ON TO INDEPENDENCE
How the fast-moving Inyo Complex Wildland Fire of July 2007 almost torched the little town of Independence, threatened the historic
Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery and nearly killed nine firefighters.

A model for any civic group under normal circumstances, residents went above and beyond to help their neighbors when disaster struck.
Download 4-page PDF story by clicking the link below
Community Group of the Year
Independence Civic Club

Darcy Ellis    Inyo Register    October 30, 2008

    There’s sort of a running joke among members of the Independence Civic Club about which sign of the apocalypse will strike their small community next.

    A sardonic sense of humor has become somewhat of a trademark here – this is the group, after all, responsible for the International Fruitcake Festival – and yet one can’t help but wonder how much genuine concern underlies the mock speculation about tornadoes, earthquakes, even locusts and plague.

    After two consecutive summers that saw the Inyo Complex Fire bearing down on their town in the summer of 2007 and the Oak Creek flash flood and mud slide tearing a path of destruction through two dozen homes this past July, it’s not hard to see why these men and women  - who watched as their neighbors, family and friends lost everything they owned, who themselves suffered at the indiscriminate, merciless hand of Mother Nature – are a bit gun shy.

    Yet ask just about anyone familiar with not only the Independence Civic Club’s recent humanitarian efforts but also its more routine community action endeavors and they’ll no doubt say that regardless of what the gods have in store for the county seat tomorrow or 20 years from now, the Civic Club won’t hesitate to be among the first to react.

    Indeed, when the sky opened up at the base of the Sierra on July 12, relentlessly dumping an hour’s worth of hail in mere minutes onto terrain left bare by the prior summer’s fire, the Independence Civic Club responded almost immediately to the ensuing flash flood that devastated Oak Creek and Fort Independence.

    Within 24 hours the group had established a relief fund at a local bank and its members – some of whom were personally displaced by the mud slide – were already scrambling to collect food, clothing and a place to stay for their newly homeless neighbors.

    The club’s effort would only accelerate and expand over the following days and weeks, until it was able to start distributing to flood and mud slide victims the more than $30,000 it had collected and raised on their behalf in less than two months.

    It is for many reasons, but primarily their selfless response to the flood, their resilience in the face of adversity, belief in civic well-being and their testament to the power of solidarity, generosity and grass-roots spirit, that the members of the Independence Civic Club are being honored in 2008 with The Inyo Register’s inaugural Community Group of the Year award.

    The way the independent panel convened to select a recipient saw it, the group was really a no-brainer choice for the honor, considering its above-and-beyond flood relief efforts on top of the community improvement and civic endeavors it organizes on a regular basis.

    Members of the Civic Club Executive Committee were nevertheless taken aback, citing the club’s work as nothing any other community group wouldn’t have done in the same circumstances.

    That’s not to say, however, that they aren’t thrilled to be recognized.

    “I am stunned,” said Civic Club President Nancy Masters, “I’m surprised because what we did is what anyone would have done, and receiving an honor is not why we organized these relief efforts.  But I feel very honored that our organization was selected.”

    The club’s secretary and Master’s sister, Mary Roper, echoed those sentiments.

    “It’s unbelievable,” she said.  “You never expect recognition, and that’s certainly not why you do all this stuff.  I’m flattered.  There’s a lot of community groups in Inyo County who do a lot for their communities, so it’s really an honor to be singled out.”     more

• Flash Flood, Mud Slide Wreak Havoc    
  Mike Gervais     Inyo Register, Bishop California     July 15, 2008

• Relief, Aid Available in Independence
  Inyo Register, Bishop California     July 19, 2008