The outsiders

     In a poll of 110 people, it was found that less than half of the crowd attending Pumpkin Fest was originally from New Hampshire. It was also found from assorted interviews, that friendship and family are the most prevalent reasons as to why the people who traveled the longest distances did so. And while people traveled long distances to Pumpkin Fest, not many traveled across a state line to see it.

    The results from this poll are as follows: 47 people were from New Hampshire, 17 from Connecticut, 19 from Massachusetts, 13 from New York, 6 from Florida, 2 from Rhode Island, 2 from New Jersey, 2 from North Carolina, 1 from Maine, and 1 from Vermont.

    Steven Elias of Miami, Florida was one of the few from Florida to come up to New Hampshire for the event. A friendship of about twenty-five years brought him to Keene.

    “We came here to visit some wonderful friends.” Elias said. “We’ve been friends since 1984, something like that. It’s wonderful here, it’s a beautiful area.”

    It was also a friendship of twenty-five years that brought Doug Clark to Keene from Trenton New Jersey.

    “We’re here visiting my friend from Peterborough, N.H., who was here last year,” Clark said. “It’s my first time to this festival. It’s very impressive that they would put this much into it. Quality fair, very nice people.”

    But it’s not just lasting friendships that brought people into Keene for Pumpkin Fest, but Family as well.

    Jeane Harry from Old Town, Florida exemplifies this assertion.

    “I’m here visiting my family.” Harry said. “This is the first time I’ve been here. I’ve read about it in a magazine for the past nineteen years.”

    Of all these people polled, few were local. Only one person polled was from Vermont.

     Kristin Greco, a freshman at Keene State College who spent the day at Pumpkin Fest, thinks this might be because local citizens have already experienced the thrill of it.

    “I was thinking the people from around here like Vermont may have already visited Pumpkin Fest,” Greco said, “and people from outside of New England like Florida or wherever else the poll said, maybe they wanted a new thrill and they heard of Pumpkinfest so they came here.”

    Caitlin Stearns, another freshman of Keene State College agrees that the thrill may just not appeal to the locals.

    “People from New York don’t go to Times Square for New Years.” Stearns said.

    Freshman Leann Lam tells about how the little representation of locals may have just been bad timing, and how they may have had better things to do.

    “The mountains in Vermont opened up so all the Vermont people could have gone there.” Lam said.

    Jillian Tomaselli, Lam’s roommate who’s also a KSC freshman, rebuts that they may have already done the Pumpkin Fest scenario elsewhere.

    “I think other places have Pumpkin Fest. My friend from UVM had one last week.” Tomaselli said. “Not as cool as ours, and not as big.”

    But fewer locals showed up in 2009, it’s a guarantee that more people have attended each year.

    John Stewart has been the KSC Campus Safety Liaison for the past few months, but has been a patrol officer at the Keene Police Department for the past eighteen years. He’s seen nearly every year.

    “The first one was nice, there wasn’t a lot of people, it was just the community,” Stewart said. “Then we beat the world record and it just exploded into this huge monstrous event. When you really sit back and look at the way it evolved it’s pretty amazing.”

Garrett Beltis can be contacted at gbeltis@keeneequinox.com.