By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Some attractions fly. Others disappear.

Sausages covered in onions and peppers, lime rickies with freshly squeezed juice and deep-fried, grapefruit-sized onions all vanished Saturday at the 13th annual Great Falls Balloon Festival.

At 10 a.m., when the 30 food booths opened, people started swilling frozen juice drinks. By noon, lines formed at most booths. Thirty minutes later, people in the main stage’s audience chomped on sausages and fried dough while 24 people competed to see who could be the first to eat an extra-large, extra-cheese pizza.

Winner Jeff Bell, who polished off his pizza in about 10 minutes, offered only a small bit of advice to aspiring power eaters:

“Don’t eat breakfast.”

Most of the weekend’s eating comes with a purpose, though.

By the time the festival concludes late today, the nonprofit groups that run each of the food booths are expected to raise about $50,000. The money is for serious causes such as building homes for the poor and funding shelters for the homeless, and for lighter causes such as purchasing uniforms for local cheerleading squads.

Despite their expected $50,000 in profit, another $50,000 will likely be spent in supplies and materials, said Nancy Barry, who chairs the festival’s food committee.

On Saturday morning, tractor-trailers full of food were emptied of boxes of meats and bags of potatoes and onions.

At the booth run by the New Auburn American Legion post – serving sausage sandwiches and lime rickies – about 275 pounds of sausage and 38 cases of limes were expected to be sold by the weekend’s end.

At the Habitat for Humanity booth, which sells “bloomin’ onions,” 13 bags of colossal onions weighing 50 pounds each were devoured on Friday night alone.

At its busiest, people waited for 45 minutes for one of the deep-fried onions. Despite the wait, some people went back for seconds.

The demand was so high, volunteer Rob Spellman ordered another 10 bags on Saturday. Just to be safe.

“This is our biggest fund-raiser of the year,” Spellman said. The organization has been here since the first balloon festival 12 years ago.

Of course, part of the trick is making their onions bloom. It isn’t easy, said Bruce Szal of Auburn.

A longtime festival volunteer, he spent Saturday morning learning to cut the onions just right, a critical piece of the assembly line.

Each onion is first topped, with volunteers slicing off the stalky stem of the white bulb and removing an outer layer or two. Then, it is placed inside a juicer-like contraption, which forces it against a circle of blades and slices it into wedges. However, the wedges are still connected at the bottom, where the root remains.

“It’s harder than it looks,” said Szal, who struggled with the onion lever. “It’s an art. You can’t think your way into it.”

After he cut the onions, they were dipped in a liquid batter, covered in a floury powder and deep-fried.

The lines grew, Szal suggested, because there were so many steps.

“We can only cook 10 or 12 at a time,” he said.

It seems to be one of the limitations of every booth. Volunteers at the Legion booth make lime rickeys as fast as they can. When the lines get long, they sometimes have three juicers going at once.

However, the sausage sandwiches can be made in advance. Before they opened their booth, Legionnaires grilled dozens of sausages and mounds of sliced onions and peppers, doused with pancake syrup to make them brown and sweet.

All that work seemed to be appreciated by the customers.

Janelle Withers of Lisbon and her dad, Dan, munched on wedges of onion and a sausage sandwich. Janelle broke off bits of the onion, dipped it in ranch sauce and smiled as she at it.

Dan Withers took a huge bite of his sausage, heaped high with onions and peppers, and groaned with satisfaction.

“You can’t really mess up a sausage,” he said.