Celebrating Sedgwick: Once a Year, Rain or Shine

By midmorning on a crisp Saturday in September the Sedgwick Fall Festival is already in full-swing.

The steady cadence of the high school marching band echoes up and down the streets with the honking of vintage cars and the occasional revving of a motorcycle. Dum-Dums and Tootsie Rolls hit the street, and kids rush out with bags to comb the curbs for candy. The volunteer Fire Department trucks follow the band, sirens blaring.

Later you can stroll the same streets and admire the shining entries in the Rod & Custom Show while sipping an icy lemonade. The same kids are now in the park, spraying their friends with Silly String and delivering confetti-filled egg shells to each other's heads. A steel drum band plays at the gazebo; a sheep bleats from the petting zoo. By 11:30 an aroma of roast beef and baked beans fills the air from the Community Barbecue.

The Fall Festival is held, like clockwork, on the third weekend of September, and since its beginning in the 1950s, has stayed relatively unchanged. It was started by the local Andale Co-Op as a sorghum festival, to celebrate harvest. The co-op provided the beef for the Community Barbecue, which Quentin Base started in 1959. Then Base headed the massive cooking effort for 23 years-- with the help of his community, of course.

"I didn't do it alone," Base laughs, "We had to feed about 2,000 people, so we had around 20 people making the sandwiches, and about five people to cook the beef."

Base and other volunteers cooked thousands of pounds of beef in an old-fashioned pit barbecue style, as it is still done today.

Today, Sedgwick has its own custom and restoration car shop, Kansas Klassics, in charge of the Rod & Custom car show, a now-standard feature of the festival. Less than fifty years ago, however, an antique tractor show would line the streets.

"We would restore old tractors and farm machinery and put on a show, running the old engines," Base said.

Another familiar attraction was the farmer's tent, where the best of the area's crops were judged, along with everything from quilts to paintings displayed for sale, similar to the Kansas State Fair today. Today this tradition carries on under the arts and crafts pavilion in the park.

Then there's every kid's favorite festivity-- the rides. Though it may not have always included the Sizzler, the swings and that giant spinning rocket, high-speed thrills and fun always arrived every September as well.

"There were always amusement people," Base said, "Little companies that came to these little towns and set up games and rides." There is even still a horseshoe throw, a staple from Base's day.

Today the Fall Festival is organized by the Booster Club, a volunteer organization that plans other activities in Sedgwick as well. The club started selling Fall Festival buttons in 1985, and giving each year's festival a theme. Buttons are required to get into some events, like the Street Dance, and to receive a plate of barbecue in the park.

And thousands of people are still served each year, according to Jaci Reimer, president of the Booster Club.

"It really brings a community together," Reimer said, "It's a day a year that you're... celebrating living in Sedgwick."

Sedgwick is located about 20 miles north of Wichita, KS on the Harvey and Sedgwick County line.