our community: NOON LIONS
When the Temperatures Get Hot, the Weatherford Noon Lion’s Club
Serve “Cheeseburgers Wet” — with a Smile
BY CRYSTAL BROWN
F
club member, also started his Lions Club experience as
a youth alongside his dad, Dr. Charles Swancy. His job
was to wrap the hamburgers and then take them into the
stands to sell.
“The old stand was east to west on the concrete slab
in front of our current stand,” Swancy said. “About the
middle of it was where the grill was in the back. It wasn’t
far from the back window. My brothers, mom and I would
pull up and talk to Dad through the back window while
he cooked hamburgers. It was an old metal shed type of
arrangement. It was hot and not well-ventilated, and if it
rained real hard they would get water in the stand. They
used to keep pallets all over to walk on.”
Then there was the tiny space used to spin cotton
candy from sugar. Club members who were delegated
this task knew they would be covered in sugar and sticky
before the end of the night.
“It would be everywhere,” Duncan said. “In their hair,
on the clothes, on the wall.”
These days the cotton candy comes pre-made and in
or the past seven decades, rodeo fans in Parker County
have depended on the skilled cooks of the Weatherford
Noon Lion’s Club for sustenance during the annual
Frontier Days Rodeo.
The local civic club, formed in 1922, produced the
first-ever Parker County Rodeo in 1947. The event was
taken over the following year by the newly-founded Parker
County Sheriff’s Posse and quickly became an annual
tradition.
But it wasn’t long before the Noon Lions stepped back
into the arena by running the rodeo concession stand in
1950, and it has been organized and operated by club
members ever since.
Longtime club member Jim Duncan started helping out
at the stand as a child in the ‘50s alongside his dad, CD
Duncan. He hauled trays of drinks into the stands to hawk
to thirsty spectators while a few club members squeezed
into the small, un-air-conditioned stand to cook hamburg-
ers.
Weatherford Mayor Craig Swancy, another current
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Photo by Zach Peterson