Moore County packs a lot into October

DUANE CROSS
MCO Publisher•Editor

If anybody figured Moore County might ease into the last quarter of the year, October has other plans.

The month starts Friday with Homecoming at Moore County High School. At 1:30 p.m., more than 20 floats and the MCHS Marching Band will leave the high school and make their way toward town. Homecoming ceremonies begin at 6 p.m., with kickoff against Eagleville at 7.

By Saturday morning, Wiseman Park will have a different kind of traffic.

The Whiskey Runners Cruisin’ the Hollow Car Show rolls in from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Oct. 3, bringing plenty of old iron, food, and music to the park. Money raised through the show stays close to home, helping local programs and neighbors who could use a hand.

The Methodist Women will be there with fried pies, too – apple, pecan, chocolate, and an apricot-and-peach blend for $3.50 apiece. Folks who do not want to wait until Saturday can get a head start Friday, when walk-in sales and preorder pickups run from 1-4 p.m. at First Methodist Church on Mechanic Street.

That gets October moving. From there, the green 4-H shirts come out, barbecue teams begin heading toward Wiseman Park, and before the month is over there will be music beside Mulberry Creek, another night up on Spencer Ridge, motorcycles rolling into town, and Halloween waiting at the end.

For a county with fewer than 7,000 people, we stay pretty busy.

A lot of what fills October around here starts close to home. Sometimes it is about helping kids. Sometimes it is about remembering somebody who mattered or opening the doors and giving folks a place to gather. Before long, there are cars in the grass and people standing around talking long after they meant to leave.

It starts with the kids

Before barbecue smoke settles over town, there will be plenty of Kelly green around Moore County.

National 4-H Week runs Oct. 4-10, putting a little extra attention on a program that spends the rest of the year teaching youngsters everything from livestock judging and shooting sports to photography and public speaking. Moore County 4-H will mark the week locally, including Wear Green Monday and Tennessee 4-H Giving Tuesday.

Plenty of Moore County families do not need National 4-H Week to know what the program means. They have hauled animals to shows, practiced speeches at the kitchen table, driven somebody to camp, or watched a youngster discover that standing in front of a room was not nearly as bad as it sounded the night before.

So the first full week of October belongs, at least in part, to our own kids. A few days later, the rest of the world starts finding its way into town.

Then Lynchburg gets crowded

The Jack has a way of changing the look of the place.

Trailers begin appearing around Wiseman Park. Cookers get rolled into position. Folks wearing team shirts start wandering around the Square, and pretty soon you hear an accent that did not come from anywhere close to Mulberry Creek.

At 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, the MCHS Marching Band will lead the Parade of Teams through Wiseman Park and the Square. By Saturday, 102 barbecue teams representing 41 states and 22 countries will be competing in Lynchburg.

That means cooks from 22 countries will spend the weekend worrying over chicken, ribs, pork, and brisket in a park where Moore County children play and families have gathered for generations.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will do what we always do when The Jack comes around. We will wander through the cook sites, run into somebody we have not seen lately, and probably eat more than we planned.

The championship may belong to the barbecue world, but the weekend still belongs to Lynchburg, too.

On Saturday morning, the Masonic Lodge on Main Street will be serving its regular second-Saturday breakfast. The timing puts a longtime local fundraiser right in the middle of the biggest visitor weekend on Lynchburg’s calendar, with the proceeds helping fund scholarships for Moore County students.

The breakfast was already part of Lynchburg. This year, there will simply be a lot more people in town who might discover it.

There is something worth seeing in Wiseman Park, but there is something worth seeing a few blocks away, too. One is an international barbecue championship. The other is a room full of people eating breakfast while a few local men keep the coffee coming and raise money for kids they may very well know.

October stretches to the county line

That same Saturday, some Moore County families may head toward Tullahoma.

New Life Baptist Church will hold its free Community Fall Festival from 4 to 7 p.m. Oct. 10, with a chili cook-off, family games, pumpkin activities, and a campfire waiting as evening settles in. The invitation is open whether visitors attend New Life, another church, or no church at all.

It is not a Moore County event, but it is the kind of nearby fall evening folks from here know well. Kids find something to do. Grown-ups wind up talking longer than expected. Somebody takes the chili judging seriously, and a marshmallow gets burned beyond saving.

October does not pay much attention to county lines, and neither do neighbors.

Back beside Mulberry Creek

By the following Friday, folks will be pulling out lawn chairs.

The Lawn Sessions return to the Jack Daniel Distillery campus Oct. 16, with Kentucky singer-songwriter Hunter Flynn and the Huffer Brothers taking the stage at 5:30 p.m. Concertgoers will spread out on the grass beside Mulberry Creek with chairs and blankets for an evening of live music.

Flynn brings his “Appalachian Soul” sound to Lynchburg, while Andy and Lee Huffer will not have far to look for familiar faces. The twin brothers graduated from Moore County High School in 2016 and have gone on to play Nashville stages, including Jelly Roll’s Goodnight Nashville.

For the Huffers, this one is a trip home. They played the first Lawn Sessions in 2025, and now they are coming back to play not far from where they grew up.

The next night, the music moves up the Ridge.

Up on the Ridge

Folks will make their way up Spencer Ridge Road on Oct. 17 for Rocktober on the Ridge IV at Whiskey Hill. Tobi Lee returns for the fourth year, with music running through the evening. This time, though, the gathering will be held in memory of Bobby Cashion, who died in June. Net proceeds will benefit Camp JOY, a cause that mattered to him.

Anybody can book music and put out some food. What makes a night like Rocktober belong to a place is everything around it.

People know Bobby’s family. They remember a conversation, a favor, or something he did years ago that nobody bothered writing down. Some will come because they like Tobi Lee. Some will come because it is a good October night on Whiskey Hill.

And some will be there because Bobby would have been.

You’ll hear the next one coming

On Saturday, Oct. 24, motorcycles will start finding their way into Lynchburg from every direction. They’ll come in on Highway 50, Highway 55, Highway 82, down Tanyard Hill, and from all points in between, with riders making their way toward Wiseman Park for Thunder in the Hollow.

There will be music, food, vendors, and plenty of chrome in the park. The local connection is the MCHS Marching Band, which will benefit from the event, including proceeds tied to Thunder in the Hollow T-shirt sales.

By then, those students will have already led Homecoming through town and welcomed barbecue teams from around the world a few days later. When Thunder rolls into Wiseman Park, another crowd will be there for them.

And then comes Halloween

By the time Thunder clears out, there will be one Saturday left in October, and Lynchburg has plans for that one, too.

Halloween falls on Saturday, Oct. 31, this year, and the Square will close again for Halloween in the Hollow. The Chamber has been planning additional afternoon and evening activities around the Saturday date, with more details still to come.

By then, Moore County will have paraded through town for Homecoming, filled Wiseman Park with old cars, celebrated 4-H, and welcomed people from 22 countries for The Jack. The Huffers will have come home to play beside Mulberry Creek, friends will have climbed Spencer Ridge to remember Bobby, and motorcycles will have rolled into town with the high school band getting some help along the way.

There will have been plenty to eat along the way, too, and more than a few evenings when staying home was the harder choice.

That is a lot for one October, but it is not all that unusual for us.

We are never going to be the biggest county in Tennessee. We do not have six-lane roads leading into town, acres of parking waiting beside every venue, or a population large enough to disappear into a crowd.

Here, the fellow parking beside you may be somebody you know. The teenager playing in the band may belong to a family down the road. When an event raises money for local kids, those kids are not an idea. They have names. And when people come from somewhere else, we make room for them.

So much for a quiet finish to the year. October is just getting started.