The Pumpkins of Circleville: A Festival Like the Old Days
The minute I arrived at the Circleville Pumpkin Show in Ohio I sensed there was something special about it, something that made it different from the other harvest festivals I had attended.
Shows and fairs in the Midwest were not new to me: I had grown up in Ohio, and had been going to fairs there and in Indiana and Illinois since I can remember, to the state fairs in Columbus and Indianapolis, to the Fairfield County Fair in Lancaster, near Circleville—and, more recently, to the Danbury Fair in Connecticut. But they were high‐powered events, with big‐name entertainers, displays of farm equipment, huge arenas full of livestock to be judged and sold. They were major commercial enterprises that charged $2 or $3 admission.
The Pumpkin Show in Circleville, which has always been free, had more the feeling of a family outing to which I had been personally invited. arrived in Circleville, about 30 miles south of Columbus, on Wednesday afternoon, the first day, and already the streets and sidewalks of this agricultural community of 13,500 were beginning to fill with visitors. Some had arrived at 11 A.M., though the show didn’t officially open till noon, and proceeded to knock on the booths for them to open. And they did.
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Traditionally one of the last festivals in the area—it is scheduled for the four days beginning on the third Wednesday of October—the show enjoys a fall setting consistent with its heritage. It began in 1903 as a farm display on the unpaved main street; one large table was set up for the farmers to show off their pumpkins and corn fodder. To celebrate the harvest there was a band, and people came from miles around.
While the date usually guarantees the show—known locally as the “Punkin” Show—some of the best weather of the year, the 1976 event was besieged by overcast skies, chilly temperatures and, occasionally, hard rain.
That first day I had followed U.S 22 out of Lancaster until the detour signs in the middle of Circleville marked the beginning of the show area. I parked right there and continued into town.
I arrived in time to see the cars and the children lining up for the Little Miss Pumpkin Show parade, the highlight of the opening day’s festivities. Normally, little girls in party dresses ride through the streets on the hoods of cars, but this time they rode inside.
I stopped at the booth operated by the Band Boosters for a pumpkinburger, a concoction made with ground beef and pumpkin that tastes like an a rich “Sloppy Joe” and costs 45 cents, then at the stand of the Marcy United Methodist Church for a homemade chicken sandwich, also 45 cents. Most of the women serving at the booths had been operating the same stands for years, and many represented second and third generations of families who’d worked on the show in one capacity or another.
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As I walked through the half‐dozen or so streets over which the show stretched—up Watt Street to Pickaway, over to Franklin and down to Scioto, past booths interspaced with rides—I was impressed by the number of local concessions. By my count it was nearly three to one. There were the standard “carpi” booths that make the rounds of all the festivals, people selling fancy belt buckles and hot dogs‐on‐a‐stick, but the vast majority were locally run. Noticeably absent were the national fast‐food chains so prevalent at the state and county fairs. Most of the food homemade.
When I bought a slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top, the woman behind the counter told me she had been selling pie at 40 consecutive Pumpkin Shows, and added that the low price‐45 cents a slice—was a result of urging by the Circleville Band Mothers. “A civic effort,” she said.
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Nearby, a half‐dozen children were scurrying around to different booths with dollars in their fists and asking for change. I started to ask the woman what they were doing when a man who had been standing close by took my arm. “The sheriff’s kids,” he said “He sends em around to check to see all the booths are honest.”
The man told me his name was Wabash (Cannonball) Johnson, and that he had been coming to the show for 50 years. “It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to fairs when I was growin’ up,” he said. “It’s like home or like I like to remember home bein’.”
Cannonball, a resident of Warren County in Indiana (he was born by the Wabash River), told me that each September he closes his welding shop, packs up his old panel truck and spends seven weeks driving around to the fairs and shows of the region, ending his annual pilgrimage in Circleville.
We walked on to the center of town and reached a fenced‐in area containing three long tables, one covered with gourds of all colors, sizes and shapes and two others, somewhat larger, loaded mostly with “punkins,” pumpkins the size of your fist and pumpkins the size only Charlie Brown and Linus dream about. Pumpkins were everywhere. They formed a stack that reached 20 feet into the air. In front of the stack, squatting on the ground, was the greatest pumpkin of all, with “329” marked on its bluish gray skin to identify its weight in pounds.
Cannonball told me it was the “grand winner” and added that it was probably grown by “one of the Coons.” Later I found out that while George Coon and his son, Mark, were premier pumpkin growers in Pickaway County —and held the show record with 378‐pound entry in 1975—the winning pumpkin was grown by Ralph Driesbach. The Driesbach pumpkin not only topped all those grown locally last year but also a 324½‐pound challenger trucked in from Nova Scotia.
We walked passed Lindsey’s Bakery, where a 350‐pound pumpkin pie had drawn a crowd, and went on to the old armory to see the crafts show. The building was full of handmade quilts and spreads, rugs and all manner of crewel embroidery and needlepoint, knitted and crocheted sweaters, dresses and suits. There was a section for ceramics, one for metalwork, jewelry and woodcrafts, and another for candles and center‐pieces.
“It’s all local,” Cannonball said. “That’s the rule. Ya gotta live within tradin’ distance of Circleville.”
I walked back the two blocks to the new Pumpkin Show building, a barn of a place with aluminum walls and cement floor. Inside, on display shelves, were all the food items—homegrown and homemade—submitted in competition. Thousands of canned goods, baked goods, fruit, carrots, beets, cucumbers, peppers and more. The prizes were small, but pride, not money, was at stake.
Outside the scene had taken on a mystical air, with the colored lights of rides flashing, a misty rain falling, and the smell of fresh fried potatoes permeating the air. Carousel music played background to the chatter of barkers and the constant crackle of announcements over the public address: “Jingles is now beginning his clown act on East Franklin ... the Miss Pumpkin Show Parade will begin in 15 minutes West Main.”
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I walked from booth to booth, sampling the pumpkin doughnuts from the bakery, which were still warm and delicious, and some pumpkin ice cream, which was interesting, and a variety of other pumpkin‐oriented foods ranking somewhere in between.
More and more people were coming in from all duvctions—from Chillicothe and Portsmouth to the south, from Washington Court House and Cincinnati to the west, from Columbus to the north and Zanesville to the east. And not all of them were Ohioans. The few motels in Circleville had stopped taking reservations in midsummer for show week, so the thousands attending from out‐of‐state had to find accommodations in neighboring towns.
As afternoon wore into evening the streets became increasingly crowded. I stopped behind an old couple trans fixed before a huge German organ, its hand‐carved figures strumming and trumpeting to the calliopedic sounds of “Sweet Rosie O’Grady” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.” A small boy in overalls stood motionless, lost in the magic of the glass blower, and a little girl in a raincoat battled with a wind of cotton candy twice the size of her head. And, somewhere off in the distance, a marching band practiced for the following day.
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At the Pumpkin Show office, Michele Morrison, who for the last several years has been the show’s unofficial director of information, told me: “It’s like Pumpkin Show’s their children. The officials, the townspeople, they’ve all been so deeply involved for so long, they protect and nurture it, deciding what’s best for the show instead of what would make it bigger Or more wealthy.”
While we talked, one of the officials —as if to illustrate her point—was politely but firmly denying a woman space for a fortune‐telling booth. “I can’t have a fortune teller,” he said. “No way to keep them honest except to watch them every minute.”
At the end of the evening I headed for Lancaster, about 20 miles to the northeast, the nearest place where I could find a room. But I returned to the show on each of the three remaining days. Attendance swelled on Saturday, as it always does. The hog calling contest drew an enthusiastic crowd, and they all cheered the Pickaway County woman who has becor?? a perennial winner. Again she defeated the sailor who drives down from Wisconsin every year to compete.
By the time the show ended at midnight on Saturday an estimated 300,000 visitors had poured in, some from as far away as Canada and Florida. The unusually cold and wet weather had kept the crowds down from the 400,000 and 500,000 recorded in previous years.
The final cleanup, usually completed so thoroughly by noon Sunday that those coming out of church see no signs the festival ever existed, was slowed by the rain and went on through the entire day. By Sunday evening ajl the handicrafts, canned goods, cakes and pies had been collected, and the 329‐pound pumpkin had been sent to the West Virginia grocery chain that buys the largest one each year. The pumpkin from Nova Scotia was donated to the town for its seeds, and the giant pumpkin me, advertised as big enough to feed 1,080 people, went to the hogs.
I looked for Wabash Johnson on the last day but never found him. I only wanted to tell him that I understood what he meant about the Pumpkin Show and the fairs of his childhood. It was almost as if, for four days in the middle of each October, the town of Circleville floated back in time.
This year’s Pumpkin Show in Circleville, Ohio, is scheduled for Oct. 19‐22. Among the many other fairs and festivals taking place this fall in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are:
OHIO
Today: Apple Butter Festival, Burton. Apple butter making, also flea market and village ox‐roast. Old Fashioned Days, Mount Gilead. Team horsemanship, gang plows, log skidding. Ohio Sauerkraut Festival, Waynesville. German folk festival with sauerkraut served amid craft demonstrations, folk music, antique car show. Oct. 15‐16: Fall Festival of Leaves, Bainbridge. Celebration of autumn, with apple butter making, crafts and entertainment.
INDIANA
Today: Feast of the Hunter’s Moon, Lafayette. Re‐enactment of annual meeting between Indians and traders during 1700’s, with feasting and trading. Oct. 14‐23: Parke County Covered Bridge Festival, Rockville. Tours to the county’s 35 covered bridges, and restored houses, schools and churches; assorted festivities and cookouts. Oct. 15‐16: Fort Vallonia Days, Vallonia. Canoe race, craft demonstrations, entertainment.
ILLINOIS
Today: Southern Illinois Folk Festival, Du Quoin. Pioneer crafts, games and sports; camping in the Shawnee National Forest. Fall Crafts Festival, Pleasant Plains. Weekend of folk singing and dancing, arts and and crafts. Oct. 15‐16: Indian Summer Festival, Springfield. Rail splitting, soap and candle making, weaving and cider pressing.—S. R.