WESTVILLE, Ind. – Pumpkins were eaten and even hurled from a huge sling shot during an event celebrating a long and still heavily attended tradition in an Indiana community.

For over 30 years, the annual Westville Pumpkin Festival has delighted crowds with one of the highlights being the parade heading north on Flynn Road from Westville Farm Supply to Main Street.

An estimated 3,000 people attended the Oct. 4 festival.

There are no shortages of pumpkins in Westville this time of year with Coulter Farms being one of the largest growers in the area with a 20-acre patch.

“Just bringing the community together to have a fun day,” said Kayla Meyers, a member of Westville Tri Kappa, the organizer of the event. The group uses the festival as a major fund raiser to promote charity, education and culture in the community of less than 5,000 residents.

The festival, which included food and craft vendors, games, live music and a car show, was anchored at Prairie Meadow Park at U.S. 6 and U.S. 421.

Meyers ran the Pumpkin Sling, a huge sling shot-looking device made from wooden posts six inches in diameter with a bungee cord fastened to the top. 

For $1, each participant was given two tiny pumpkins to place in the bungee cord, one at time, for launching by pulling back on the strap and letting go of it. The objective was to send the pumpkins through a hula-hoop or hit a tree.

A number of pumpkins that missed their mark landed in a woods about 75 feet away. For one hour, Meyers said about 20 children and adults took part with some playing more than once.

Only three of the 100 tiny pumpkins obtained from Burek Farms near Kingsbury were left when the chance to play was over.

“The kids loved it. They just kept getting back in line and doing it over and over,” she said.

Other festival attractions included a pumpkin pie eating contest, a pumpkin bake-off and fireworks at the nearby campus of Purdue University Northwest.

There was also a contest for people to guess the weight of a 161-pound pumpkin from Coulter Farms and displays like over a half dozen pumpkins grown in the backyards of local children who were given seeds to plant in the spring.

The car show consisted of dozens of vehicles, including a 1947 Studebaker pick-up truck not driven for more than 50 years until this past June.

The owner is Ray Griffin, who obtained the truck with its original paint job after the death of his father and spent a year getting it ready to be on the roads again.

“It’s definitely been sitting for a long time,” he said.

Griffin said his father purchased the truck in 1969 and parked it in his garage five years later after the steering went out. His now late father, for some reason, never fixed the truck but still took it with him 17 years ago when he moved to Alabama.

Griffin said he took possession of the truck after his father died about two years ago.

“I loaded it up and brought it here,” he said.

Griffin said he rebuilt the brakes and fuel system on the truck, rewired the entire back end and did other things like put new tires on it.

He said driving the truck with 71,000 miles on the odometer is like going back in time with the top speed from its three-speed engine at just over 40 miles per hour.

“It’s pretty much like driving a tractor,” he said.