Snook resident Lydia Faust remembers the first year Burleson County hosted its famous annual party -- Kolache Festival -- 24 years ago.

"It started because one year the Extension Education Association wanted to do something in the county besides a pie or cake bake-off," she said. "So we had a kolache bake-off."

After the event, Faust said, local residents rushed in to polish off the remaining kolaches. And the festival was born.

Organizers expect as many as 20,000 people to converge on downtown Caldwell on Saturday for the free event. The Burleson County Czech Heritage Museum, at Fawn and Shaw streets, will host a pre-festival party at 5:30 p.m. Friday. Entry is $6 for the meal. A free street dance will follow.

The festival will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday with a Vitam -- or welcome -- that will include national, Texas and Czech anthems, crowning of festival royalty and a presentation by the Burleson County Slovanic Benevolent Order of the State of Texas Youth Beseda Dancers.

The event will feature entertainment from traditional Czech performers such as the Czechaholics and the Ennis Czech Boys, a kolache-eating contest, a street rod and classic car show, arts and crafts, a 5K run and walk and the annual bake-off -- which has grown to include as many as 200 adult and youth bakers.

Faust, who is organizing the bake-off, said she probably would help some of the young people compete.

"Baking a kolache just really takes a lot of patience on the part of the person," she said. "You have to know what the dough is supposed to look like."

Faust said preparing a filling for the Czech wedding pastry also requires some special skill.

Caldwell Mayor Bernard Rychlik -- who also has been involved with the festival since its early days -- admits he doesn't know the secret to making a good kolache.

"I just like to eat them," he said.

Rychlik said the Kolache Festival's grown by leaps and bounds since its first year, when he delivered his Czech greeting to only 200 festival-goers from the Burleson County Courthouse steps.

The mayor said attendance doubled in the second year and increased again in the third year, when organizers added a polka band. By the fifth year, more than 15,000 people attended the festival, he said.

"Our motels usually sell out that weekend," he said. "We're in such a good location. People come out of Austin, Bryan-College Station, Houston -- and we even see people coming out of Dallas."

This year, Rychlik said, several kolache bakers will be in attendance, including Kolache Rolf of Bryan and bakers from Schulenberg and other parts of Texas.

"They'll start selling kolaches around 7 a.m. in the morning, and there will be about 4,000 dozen kolaches," he said. "We should have ample kolaches to last through the day."

So far, Rychlik said, the festival has about 30 entries for the car show, 140 to 150 arts-and-craft show entrants and as many as 44 food vendors.

The festival will also feature cane-weaving, grist-mill, bobbin-lace, dulcimer-playing and blacksmithing demonstrations and a softball tournament.

For more information, visit the festival Web site at www.burlesoncountytx.com.

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