1992: Second festival produces a second record
The count is 1,628 jack-o'-lanterns

By CATHERING PRITCHARD, Sentinel staff

Hundreds of fiery jack-o'-lanterns leered, grinned and scowled as people of all ages and interests thronged Keene's downtown on a warm Friday night to check out the second annual Harvest Festival.

"This is pretty neat," said Olga Kennison of Keene, as her 16month-old daughter Ashley examined and touched some carved, lit-up pumpkins with fascination.

"It's really great to get the community together like this," Kennison said.

On Central Square, 4-year-old Kelsey Rae Hanrahan of Keene, dressed as a scary witch, said her favorite part of the night was the trick-or-treating, offered by merchants along Main Street.

"Trick-or-treating is more fun," she said.

Children in every sort of costume and tightly clutching their candy bags and buckets roamed downtown with their parents; there seemed to be an inordinate number of ghosts, bat men and witches, but neither did the evening lack for scarecrows, lambs, cows, fairy princesses and others.

But the evening wasn't just for children.

John and Kathi Conwell of Keene, whose teenage children would have found it "corny" to come, said they loved simply strolling through the crowd, looking at the hundreds of people and pumpkin faces.

"Years ago, everybody used to be in Keene on Friday nights" to shop, Kathi Conwell said. "We used to just come on down and watch the people go by."

The pumpkins, fat and skinny, big and little, fantastical and more ordinary, and most of which remained lit up, encircled Central Square, the gazebo, the fountain and wound around the low stone walls on the brand-new Railroad Square, just down Main Street. And pumpkins lined open shelves set up in both squares.

Carved and brought to the festival by anyone who wanted to participate, the pumpkins were definitely stars of the night, not just in appearance but number -- 1,628, according to an official count by certified public accountants.

The festival's sponsor, the Keene Downtown Association, hopes that number will be large enough to get it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

That's why the counting was done with such seriousness. Carvers were also asked to sign official log books when they delivered their pumpkins.

Last year's festival attracted about 700 pumpkins.

And, after the festival? The pumpkins that are left behind will become a feast for a Fitzwilliam farmer's pigs.

This dispatch was published Saturday, Oct. 24, 1992 in The Keene Sentinel