2004 - Pumpkin potpourri: Throng packs downtown Keene; record attempt falls short

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IAN BAGLEY Sentinel Staff

It was ghosts, gypsies, ninjas, princesses, lions and frogs and kangaroos, mummies and skeletons.

It was giant robots, angels on soapboxes, shop-window mannequins that moved and scarecrows that spoke.

And many believe it was the largest crowd in Keene’s history.

It was families from Texas and California and all over New England, old folks in wheelchairs and toddlers in strollers, cruising the streets of downtown Keene in a swirling mass.

It was hot apple cider, french fries, fried dough and cheeseburgers, chili and ice cream, pizza and hot chocolate.

It was folk, rock, jazz, salsa, and hokie-pokie.

Above all, it was pumpkins.

Covering the cannon on Central Square. Towering above the crowds. Lodged in every nook and cranny and piled row upon row on scaffolds and down alleyways.

The jack-o’-lanterns grinned, leered and screamed. There were graveyard scenes, creatures real and mythical, cheers — Go Red Sox! — numbers and letters and sculptures reflecting hours of careful work and years of experience.

It was pumpkins that spelled out the names of political candidates, insurance companies and elementary schools.

It was pumpkins manipulated to look like monsters, mermaids, spiders and blowfish. It was pumpkins shouting slogans, offering advice and proposing marriage.

It was a museum of pumpkin oddities. It was pumpkin sailing ships and pumpkin toilets and the Old Man of the Mountain carved into a pumpkin.

It was pumpkin pies and pie- eating contests, seed-spitting contests, pumpkin-carving contests, pumpkin soup and pumpkin cookies.

Keene police Sergeant Edward F. Gross has been to the last six festivals “and I think this is the biggest one yet,” he said Saturday night.

Many of the nonprofit vendors sold out, and Center Stage sold all of its festival merchandise. Police said the day was fairly crime-free.

“I don’t think the day could have been any more perfect than it was,” said Wendy S. Ganio, the producer of this year’s festival for Center Stage Cheshire County.

Except for one tiny detail: Keene didn’t break its own world record this year.

At 8:30 p.m., in the middle of the median strip on Main Street, festival organizers announced the official pumpkin count taken this year by Lehman & Wilson PC.

It was 27,584.

In other words, it was 1,368 short of the world record Keene set at last year’s festival, when 28,952 lighted pumpkins were counted.

“But who cares, basically,” asked Colleen Mason, Center Stage Cheshire County’s associate producer, as fireworks rocketed above railroad square.

“The record is a small piece of this, at this point. It’s a community celebration,” she said.

Mason said the event went “flawlessly” this year. “Everything went very, very smooth,” she said.

The winner of this year’s Great Gourd Guess — the man who came closest to guessing the number of jack-o’-lanterns downtown — was Keene’s Jack Davis.

Boston, which was hoping to overtake Keene with its own festival this year, only mustered up 16,402 jack-o’-lanterns. So Keene’s standing is secure for another year.

“I guess we got Boston’s attention, eh?” Gross said, with pride.