Mason celebrates Down Home Days

MASON – It only took Wayne Babin a minute of looking at a 4-foot-tall, weathered metal flower crafted from horse shoes to decide he wanted to buy it from Steve Hildreth's booth at Mason's Down Home Days.

He'd seen Hildreth's work at a previous art fair in Charlotte and passed up on opportunity to buy it.

"I was glad to see it here," he said.

Hildreth and his wife, Rhonda, of Gaines, were among many vendors gathered around Mason's historic courthouse square Saturday for the annual fall Down Home Days celebration, which also included entertainment, a pie sale, kids' games and a golf ball drop.

There was live entertainment in the form of musicians, as well as a group of martial arts students conducting a demonstration on the courthouse lawn.

Hildreth, a journeyman sheet metal welder, started crafting items out of horse shoes a couple of years ago, after he did some work for a friend who owns a horse farm and she gave him five, 5-gallon pails filled with horseshoes.

He chooses shoes that are close to the same size, lays them out in a pattern, then welds them together. He uses them to create the flowers, hearts, signs, table bases and more.

In another booth, Christy Bartle of Livonia sold plywood garden gnomes (a customized Spartan version was $25), plywood cutouts in the shape of candy corn for outdoor decorating and more.

"I like the atmosphere," she said of selling at Down Home Days, which also occurs in the spring. "I like that's it's one city block around the courthouse."