Published: October 21, 2008 11:58 am      

Children enjoy trucks in Fuqua Park

DUNCAN — Trucks.

Big trucks.

Red trucks. Green trucks.

All kinds of trucks were on display for children and adults to touch, climb on and play with Saturday morning at Fuqua Park for the first Touch-A-Truck fundraiser.

While the event was free to enter and play with the equipment, donations were accepted and food for sale to help raise money for Gabriel’s House, an after-school program for kindergarten to third grade.

Morgan Collier, who organized the event, said that there were about 12 trucks on display from Duncan Fire Department, Cotton Electric, Waste Management and others.

“Everyone has been nice to volunteer so much time for this event,” Collier said. “It’s taken about two months to plan.”

The idea came to Collier when she and her husband were living in Norman.

“We saw something like this up there and wanted to do it for the community here,” she said.

The event began at 9 a.m. and ended at noon Saturday and plenty of families showed up for the event, Collier said.

“But it’s hard to say how many people are here,” she said. “It seems everyone has brought three or four children.”

Though the children liked many of the vehicles, the fire trucks were one of the favorites.

“They are bigger and louder,” Kayla Bouchard said.

The horn on the fire truck was loud. The horn on an 18-wheel Halliburton hi-rate blender was also loud. Some of the children got into a horn fight to see who could pull the cord of the fog horn the most times.

Nathan Lambert said he pulled the cord seven or eight or nine times.

Seven-year-old Caleb Seely said he was proud to honk the horn five times.

Another popular truck was Cotton Electric’s basket truck.

Matt Winburn of Cotton Electric stayed in the bucket and gave rides to children up and down in the air while Larry Crowell answered questions from families.

“All the kids love it,” Crowell said.