Music and magic, beer and bouncy houses, watermelon and worship, pancakes and a parade are just a few of the finds Friday through Sunday in Rossville.
But the center of attention is on the corn, and a lot of it. The Rossville Corn Festival will feature corn eating contests, a “tallest corn stalk” contest and, fittingly, a cornhole tournament. There will also be plenty of corn available for those looking to get their fix.
Morgan Hansen, president of the Rossville Community Development Committee, said she loves the way the celebration, now in its 91st year, brings people together.
“It actually started celebrating the next harvest,” he said. “One thing you’ll notice about Rossville is that we have cornfields everywhere.”
Rossville is surrounded by corn, so the festival is just a way to prepare for the harvest and thank farmers for their hard work, Hansen said.
“It’s a really fun time to get together before everyone gets out on the field and gets busy,” he said. “It’s like stepping back in time. You go out, you’re in the park, you talk face to face with people.”
Corn-eating and corn-growing contests draw large crowds
Everyone enjoys the corn eating contest, which starts at 6pm on Friday at the Rossville City Park tennis courts.
“People come from all over to do this,” Hansen said. “They love this. It’s divided into age groups. There are toddlers, school-aged children and adults. Each winner gets a gift card.
“For younger kids, it’s fun,” Hansen added. “My son and his friends in sixth grade, the last few weeks have been practicing eating the corn, how to prepare for it.”
Hansen especially likes to see people with dental problems.
“When you have kids who don’t have front teeth, I’m like, ‘Oh my God!’ Oh, help yourself,” he said.
Corn growers carry signs of their pride and joy, looking to outdo the competition every year. This competition also starts on Friday at 6pm on the tennis courts.
“The Kansas Corn Association really sponsors our tall corn stalk event,” Hansen said. “People from Silver Lake, Rossville, St. Mary’s, Topeka—they grow the corn, find its tallest stalk, cut it down, and bring it in to be measured.
“First place gets $75, second place gets $50 and third place gets $25, so it’s cool to see who has the tallest corn stalk,” he said.
The parade and meetings always play a role
The Grand Parade is a big draw. It starts at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning on Carrer Major.
“The football team will have a float,” Hansen said. “The cheerleaders will have a float Junior Dawgs Football Teamwhich is our first through sixth grade, will have a float.”
The parade is “the first time all summer in the whole city, all your friends are there, and you see everybody, and it’s a really fun experience, a great experience,” Hansen said.
“People come from all over for our parade,” she added.” I think we had over 3,000 people in our parade last year. It’s amazing to see the streets lined up, full of guests.”
Rossville also sees most of their gatherings during the festival.
“People plan it all year for this weekend because there will be so many people in town,” Hansen said. “We have people from Manhattan, Topeka, Lawrence coming for music.
“So we have a multitude of people coming for a multitude of reasons, but yes, you have grandchildren coming to visit grandparents, you have cousins, aunts, uncles, everything,” he said. “So friends, you name it, they’re there.”
Friday night starts with a bang
Festivities begin at 4pm at Rossville City Park.
“Friday night is all about the venue,” Hansen said. “We’ll have high school cheer, high school dance, they’ll be performing. The high school band will be performing.
“We decided we were going to ‘go big or go home,’ and we got a 52-foot bounce house that’s a water obstacle course into a small pool,” Hansen added. “And then we had one just for the younger kids, because some three- and four-year-olds probably shouldn’t be keeping up with the older kids.”
At the end of the evening, a watermelon meal with fireworks will follow.
Wizard to perform in front of a tough crowd on Saturday afternoon
Marty Hahne, aka Marty the Magician, will bring his special brand of illusion, aimed at a younger audience, at 1pm on Saturday.
“I think they love to see that an adult can act really silly and funny, and the kids love the way I approach the show,” Hahne said. “I always tell people I’m 63 years old with a maturity level of about eight years.”
“A lot of times, kids come up against me and think they’re somehow getting the best of me, and then I managed to turn things around.”
Kids can be pretty crafty, Hahne said.
“They’re an honest audience,” he said. “If you have something in your right hand and apparently you put it in your left hand … adults will just say, ‘Okay, he made it disappear from his left hand,’ and kids will say, ‘What it’s inside” your right hand?
“They’ll still want to know. So you have to be on your toes.”
Audience participation is a big part of Hahne’s show.
“Maybe we’ll have two kids who are brave enough to get on stage and see if a sheet of steel can go through their wrists,” he said.
The Saturday night street dance features the Lazy Wayne Band and Bash
Several blocks will be cordoned off for Saturday’s festivities from 6.30pm in the city centre.
“Our biggest attraction of the whole weekend is our street dance, which is Saturday night,” Hansen said. “We stayed local this year. We’ve got the Lazy Wayne Band and Bash. They’re amazing – old school country, current songs, ’80s and ’90s. They’re all over the place, so there’s a little bit of something. to everyone”.
The American Legion will host a party with live music after midnight.
What’s new? A zoo
This year’s Tall Corn Festival will feature its first petting zoo from 4-8pm on Friday and 10am-5pm on Saturday.
Children can visit this zoo for free. It will offer a llama, an alpaca, goats, sheep, rabbits, calves, zebu and tortoises,
“I laughed because I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is going to be so great,'” Hansen said.
She thinks the kids will “love it,” she said.
‘It’s just amazing. It’s just a different city’
The city will conclude the events on Sunday with a service of worship in the park and then a horseshoe tournament.
Hansen is grateful for everything city workers do to make the annual event a success.
“They give a lot of their time to help us this weekend,” he said. “We’ve called them before at 1, 2 o’clock in the afternoon with a problem, and they show up. They get up, come down and fix it for us. So we’re very grateful.
“I know they probably put in 40 hours this weekend alone.”
“It’s exhausting,” Hansen said, speaking of his personal experience. “But every year when it’s done, I’m very proud to be from Rossville. And all the support we get, the money that’s raised from this event goes right back into our community.
“It’s an amazing feeling to see families out there. I have two young children and I always tell them that community service is what it’s all about.
“It’s amazing. It’s a different city.”
What to know about Rossville’s Tall Corn Festival
Participation in the Grand Parade is free. Participants simply show up and collect a number to be judged.
Tickets for the street dance, available at the door, are $15 for adults and $5 for children ages 5-12. Children up to four years old are free. Lawn chairs are recommended for the event.
For a full schedule of events visit RCDC Tall Corn 2022 event website.
Catheryn Hrenchir is a feature writer for The Topeka-Capital Journal. She can be reached at chrenchir@gannett.com or (785) 817-6383.
