It’s Carnival Time!
The smell of fried onions and the sound of carousel music has drifted through Kilmarnock the first week of August every year for 75 years. It’s the smell and the sound of the Kilmarnock Volunteer Fire Department Firemen’s Festival.
Started in the summer of 1935, three years after the department’s inception, the carnival moved around town for several years before settling in its permanent home on a four-acre tract on Waverly Avenue.
It’s been a popular meet-and-greet event for generations of Northern Neck families. Many who attended the carnival as children now return home with their grandkids for carnival week.
The carnival, which always begins the last week of July, runs nightly from July 29 through August 7 (except Sunday). It’s open from 7 to 10 p.m. on weekdays and from 7 to 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Carnival fees
Parking and admission to the carnival is free. Games and rides require tickets.
All tickets cost $1. Games such as the ring toss or pick-up-ducks are one ticket, while others may be more. Rides, like the ferris wheel, merry-go-round and Mind Winder, are one to two tickets each. The rock wall requires five.
Food, snacks and drinks require tickets or cash.
And it’s official; the mayor and town council recently proclaimed July 29 through August 7 as “Carnival Days” in the town of Kilmarnock.
The proclamation recognizes the Kilmarnock Volunteer Fire Department’s 80 years and thousands of hours of volunteer service to citizens and businesses of Kilmarnock, Lancaster and adjoining counties since 1930.
The town also honored the 75th annual Kilmarnock Volunteer Fire Department Firemen’s Festival, calling the event a “treasured community jewel.”
It takes some 200 volunteers to run the carnival each night. About 50 of those are firemen.
“It’s only because of the dedication of the firemen and the public who volunteer that we can do this,” said carnival president Johnny Smith. “We have people come every night to help who really have nothing to do with the fire department. We can’t thank them enough.”
One of only two fire department-owned and operated carnivals in the state, the Kilmarnock carnival has changed relatively little in 75 years. The symbolic ferris wheel — Big Eli — was purchased by the department in 2005. The refurbished 1964 model has 12 seats that spin high above the carnival grounds at one corner of the lot. At the opposite corner is the merry-go-round, a carousel of colorful horses that was repainted by members of the local art league and volunteers in the early 1990s. Both are fun for all ages.
Old favorites for the toddlers include the Happy Cloud Ride, planes and canoes, swings, a moonbounce and other inflatables.
Older children and adults have a new ride this year, The Mind Winder, which spins around and “is basically a throw-up machine,” according to carnival treasurer Bill Mitchell. It will replace The Paratrooper.
Among the new games for the 2010 carnival are the Coconut Climber, the Boom Blasters, the Quarterback Toss and the High Striker. The Coconut Climber offers all takers three slippery trees to climb and the first one to the top wins. The High Striker is a taller version of an older game where the player strikes a pad with a hammer to ring the bell at the top.
Players pump up four balloons and the one that bursts first represents the winner in Boom Blasters.
The firemen offer about 18 games around the grounds. Some are freestanding but most are housed in one of eight permanent buildings.
The most popular continues to be the pick-up-ducks game, manned for more than 30 years by Lester Brent. Brent started volunteering at the carnival 46 years ago and moved from one booth to another in the first few years before settling in behind the tank of flowing water that carries along tiny plastic ducks.
Carnival exhibit
To learn more about the Kilmarnock Volunteer Fire Department Firemen’s Festival, visit the exhibit at the Kilmarnock Museum on Main Street.
The rotating exhibit features a documentary on the history of the department and photos and memorabilia from the last 75 years of the carnival.
On display are old tickets, old handmade wheels of chance, Bingo prizes, a car from the children’s car ride and an outboard engine which operated one of the boats on the children’s boat ride.
The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
To Brent’s surprise, the duck game “drew more kids last year than it has any other year.”
Back when Brent started working the stand, a turn cost a nickel. Now it’s $1 to pick up a duck. The little prizes continue to delight youngsters.
Other children’s games include the water squirt, ring toss, string draw, under-11-over-21 and bean bag toss.
Adults remain occupied with scratch tickets, Bingo and the dime wheel.
When the carnival first opened, the Bingo fee was ten cents per card per game. That increased to 25 cents, where it remained for a long time, said Dean Loudy, 80, of Kilmarnock. Loudy has volunteered in the Bingo stand for some 30 years.
It now costs $1 a card or $2 for three cards and the prize is 50 percent of the money taken in that game.
“Back when,” said Loudy, “you used to actually win prizes.”
Bingo winners, up until the mid 80s, actually picked from an array of prizes, including dishes, pots and pans, lamps and electronics.
The dime wheel is the big draw for the betting man. Each win on the wheel means a ticket for the nightly prizes, which are donated by local businesses.
The grand prize, always given away on the final night of the carnival, is a 2010 Chevy Camaro this year.
According to Brent, the grand prize has always been either a car or truck, except for one year back in the early 1950s when the firemen offered a choice of three prizes: a car, boat or airplane.
“The winner that year took the car,” said Brent.
The firemen are selling 5,000 tickets at $10 apiece for a chance to win the Camaro.
