EVANSVILLE — Asking the little boy attached to Karen Slown's wrist to contain his excitement at the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival would have been a fool's errand.
Zach is autistic, said Slown, a nurse at Culver Family Learning Center. He's on the spectrum. So he doesn't do the Fall Festival, proper. Too colorful. Too busy. Too loud. Too everything.
Except on Special Kids Day . That's the day the Nut Club and local sponsors let hundreds of local kids with special needs enjoy Evansville’s West Side tradition on their own terms. Tuesday morning at the 103rd annual festival was dedicated to students with special needs from Vanderburgh and Warrick counties and other local schools.
From 9 a.m. until lunch the students were given a blank check to indulge in as many free games and rides as they wanted, followed by a donated lunch that included hot dogs, hamburgers, corn dogs, ice cream and cotton candy.
Karen gently clutched Zach's arm while the little boy, his gaze fixed on distant attractions, visibly yearned for them. She released him, but with a wrist harness that ensured he wouldn't scamper off and become lost.
"He elopes, so he will run if he’s not right next to an adult or holding an adult’s hand — but he doesn’t like to really hold adults’ hands either, so it's just for an extra added bit of safety if a loud noise happens or he gets a little bit overwhelmed," Slown said.
No way could Zach enjoy the fall festival without Special Kids Day, Slown declared.
" This is almost too much for him, but it’s really nice that they do this because it’s definitely a lot less crowded and he doesn’t have to wait in as long of lines, which is very nice," she said. "He gets to just walk up to any game and play it. He doesn’t have to wait for them to take tickets or money or anything. He just gets to go up and play the games. And he gets to ride all of the rides.
"I don’t know that this is anything that he’s ever really been able to do."
Special Kids Day started around 1990, according to Courier & Press archives, with about 150 students the first year. The day would not be possible without volunteers and donations from local businesses.
It was a bit loud and crowded around a bumper cars attraction Tuesday morning as Allison Masterson stood alongside her 10-year-old daughter, Mary. The pair were part of a delegation from nearby Westside Catholic School.
The demure youngster wasn't looking to be interviewed, although she did cast a sunny smile.
"If you’ve been (at the fall festival) in the evening time when you're shoulder to shoulder from one end to the other end, it’s a bit of a difference," Masterson said. "These parents are also watching these kids. Every parent and teacher here knows that that these are special kids, so that if one looks a little bit lost, we’re all here as a big group to support all of the other children here.”
Leigh Cutrell, a resource teacher at Westside Catholic, said students in grades 5 through 8 go through a kind of sweet torture being at the school's St. Boniface Campus. It's about a block distant from the Fall Festival.
"That's where we can start hearing the sounds and see things, the rides being put together (before the festival begins)," Cutrell said.
So it's fair to say the kids were bouncing off the walls on Monday? Yes, Cutrell confirmed, that's not overstating it.
Cutrell gave thanks to the Nut Club and sponsors for providing the special kids "a very safe environment."
"You can just see the smiles on their faces and what a wonderful time that they’re having," she said. "They go on field trips with their classmates, but this is their special day."
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: 'Special kids' get their own day at Evansville's West Side Nut Club Fall Festival
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