A story of a mere four column inches appeared earlier that week in the Star to announce the festival’s schedule. Between a 9:00 a.m. start and a 5:00 p.m. finish you could expect to see “a swimming meet, a tennis tournament, watermelon eating contest, watermelon seed-spitting contest, sack race, bicycle race, barrel race, tug ‘o war, basketball shooting [no word in the article of what calibers would be allowed], wood-chopping contest, greased pig chase, cow chip throwing contest, horseshoe pitching, skateboard contest, egg-throwing contest.” It’s hard to imagine how they fit all that in, isn’t it?
That night there was to a be “a tractor pull,” and possibly a display of “lawn and garden vehicles.”
Then at 9:00 p.m. in downtown Hope, in a paragraph that makes things a little unclear, there was to be a Teen-Hop, possibly located at Cross Tie Junction. The Ol’ Smoothies would be performing. Andy Caldwell and Red Goodner and The Playboys would be playing country music where there would also be square dancing. Or maybe Cross Tie Junction was a band playing at the teen-hop?
Also, unlike this week’s festival, which does not have events on Sunday, the 1977 festival, starting probably outside the Coliseum at 12:30 p.m. Sunday—obviously allowing for church attendance that morning—was to serve “watermelon for all until 2:30 p.m.” Doors to the Coliseum would open at 1:30 p.m. for no doubt a voluminous crowd to come in to see some preliminaries and then the famous Louisiana Hayride put on its show.
The classic Louisiana Hayride was based at Shreveport’s Municipal Memorial Auditorium, and hip-joined to radio station KWKH, which held ownership over the show and gave it a regular radio slot from 1948 to 1960. A revival of the show, independent from the radio station but with permission to use the name, travelled to towns around the Ark-La-Tex region putting on a music/comedy/talent revue The classic version had featured superstars like Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Kitty Wells, Marty Robbins and even late-night record-sales commercial champ Slim Whitman.
But as of 1977, the big names had moved on. The revived Louisiana Hayride still made for a good draw and, at intermission, none other than Miss Arkansas 1977, Bunnie Holbert, would be announcing winners of the watermelon growing contest, the beard-growing contest and, since we were in the heyday of Evel Knievel, the evening would finish with the motorcycle jumping of several watermelons, conducted by members of the Gopher Hole Racing Team.
Coverage of the festival was extensive in the Hope Star’s Monday August 29th edition. The lead headline was “Big Melon Festival Draws Thousands” and the accompanying story with no byline quoted Rogers in calling the event “an overwhelming success.” Going on, the story said visitors had come from as far as California and Illinois and that it had even merited coverage from TV’s Channel 6. This was true, though rain had forced the street dance planned Saturday night into the Coliseum.
Performers in the Coliseum Sunday afternoon included a warmup show of local talent including Flapper Fanne Hawthorne and the comedy team of Earnest Ridgell and Joe McCulley.” The Louisiana Hayride “stellar attractions” were Micki Fuhrman (still releasing albums today), Truman Lankford, Willie Rainsford, and the Catfish Band, while Dave Kent hosted. Bunnie Holbert sang “Feelings” and announced Ivan Bright had won the watermelon growing contest. Afterward, the story says, came “a cycle jump.” Rogers reported that the Coliseum had been packed.
The redoubtable president of the paper’s ownership group and longtime writer of the rock-ribbed conservative column Our Daily Bread Alex Washburn complimented his second-in-command, calling the success of the festival “a tribute to the management and hard work of the organization put together hurriedly by C.M. (Pod) Rogers Jr.” Washburn was impressed that festival crowds stayed in town despite “three squall lines” that came through Saturday.
The coverage continued to Tuesday’s Hope Star with a prominent first page photo of Holbert posing with several no-doubt smitten National Guardsmen around a huge watermelon in a washtub and one and a half pages featuring photos from competitions and other doings. But first things first, right? Who was the winner of the first watermelon-eating contest of the modern generation of watermelon festivals? Ricky Campbell, who, as the caption tells us, “ate four slices or one whole watermelon to win” in a bout that lasted 20 minutes.
The event would set the pattern for 48 more Watermelon Festivals. It had been the first watermelon festival since a one-off took place in 1935. A string of them starting in 1926 had been stopped after 1930 after Hope’s leaders concluded the town could not accommodate the crowds due to Depression-era financial troubles. But the second-generation Watermelon Festival has never been bigger than this year and will no doubt go on as long as Hope is here.
Next year’s 50th Annual Festival will take place on the centennial anniversary of the first-ever Watermelon Festival, which took place in 1926.
Above photo of C.M. Rogers taken from a Youtube video posted by joanagan1. Her channel has several videos from Hope's recent past.
Below: a poster advertising the Louisiana Hayride show at the 1977 Hope Watermelon Festival courtesy of Ricks Hollywood's ebay listing.
