15 Small Towns Whose Fall Traditions Nobody Else Seems to Have: a Mona Lisa Scarecrow and Touchdown Sirens

“Scarecrow my parents made of Mona Lisa for local scarecrow competition”

6th place!

“First time making a homecoming mum. I think I did alright and she’s happy.”

Honestly I didn’t think she would want one being at that “everything’s lame” age, but she had fun going to [the craft store] and picking all the stuff.

She was surprised how heavy it was. I told her this is small compared to some, wait til high school lol.

Too bad her school has a no bells policy. Couldn’t even tape them.

I finally went last year and got a bunch of great photos, some of which I posted here. It’s absolutely worth checking out.

They’re all real pumpkins. They use heavy machinery to lift them in and out of the water. And the first race of the event is paddled by the actual growers of the pumpkins. Subsequent races are paddled by other people.

Yeah, the town I grew up in, the high school football stadium at times had upwards of 10,000+ people in it and the town only has a population of around 4500. I played football in high school and just being on the team made you a local celebrity.

The town would sound the tornado siren, as we were the Blue Tornado, during occasional games when we scored. Then the town stopped doing it as it was raising alarm for some people as they used the siren for everything, and a siren was attached to the scoreboard.

I remember one game my senior year we scored 50 points on a team in the first quarter and they stopped ringing the siren after the 4th touchdown.

Last year was fantastic. There was a massive tower of carved, lighted pumpkins. Also, anyone could carve a pumpkin for free during the day, so there were thousands of lighted pumpkins on display up and down Main Street. They also had trick-or-treating on Main Street, a costume parade, live music, and other events.

Zozobra. A 60-foot tall marionette that we light on fire. We just celebrated the hundredth year last week!

It coincides with our fiestas, which started as a celebration to kick off fall and evolved from there.

Ketchum, Idaho has the Trailing of the Sheep in the autumn. It’s when they bring the sheep down from summer grazing in the mountains to their winter digs, but there’s a whole festival.

The town I live in has an annual fall festival that features a chili cook-off where everyone can buy a ticket to be a judge and you get to sample all the chilis and vote. It’s a fun tradition.

Every fall, this family brings the grandkids to downtown Prattville for the Parade of Pumpkins, where the community sets out pumpkins for everyone to judge, and they always take pictures in the same spot. This year, a storm pushed the festival back a week, and the grandkids couldn’t come. So the grandparents walked the Glow Trail and the butterfly trail with their dogs and filmed all of it, so the granddaughters could still see it.

“Parade of pumpkins and small town living”

“Circleville, OH has the largest pumpkin festival in the United States, with over 400,000 pumpkin fans attending the 4-day celebration. Appropriately, this is their water tower”

My aunt took us years ago. It was amazing, the best pumpkin pie ice cream I’ve ever had and very well organized.

Late summer the green chile crop is harvested from chile growers across the state and brought to stands and grocery stores where they are roasted after purchase. You will see barrel shaped roasters pop up during the summer in preparation for chile season.

The smell of roasting chile is in the air and it’s fantastic. It’s a staple in almost all our cuisine, so most New Mexicans will buy a few bags of them and freeze the roasted chile for the rest of the year. Also the Red chile you hear about in New Mexican food is just aged green chile.

This creator grew up watching the streets of their little Oregon town fill with scarecrows every October. One fall, they finally made one of their own at home, a tribute to their favorite cryptid, built from black trash bags. Then it sat by the door waiting for pickup, because the town places every scarecrow around downtown and along Main Street.

“I grew up watching the streets of our little town become haunted by scarecrows every October!”

I grew up in Anoka and one of the highlights of my time there was walking in the parade as an elementary student. It was pretty huge for a young kid. Ps I was a [soda] can.

Evansville has some good ones you just missed, but for future reference — the Fall Festival is basically a food truck festival with 100+ food vendors, all run by local non-profits. Since it’s a fundraiser, they often try to outdo each other by having the best food or the most unique food, and a local radio station gives out awards each year so you can figure out the best places to eat.

Recently I have been thinking back to the mountains and the things I miss most from them. I was thinking, specifically, about the woolly worms and woolly worm festivals that go on each year where I was.

I miss Banner Elk so much. My favorite part as a kid was always when they raced the woolly worms up the strings. It was just like the crawdad racing we did at home, but vertical and with an audience!

My Mimi taught me about them, and that it was the first one you saw that’d tell you the next winter season. Whoever found the first one in fall would run to the house to show everyone! (and then gently put them back where they found em)

I moved all the way up close to Canada, but Google says they may still be up here. I hope to see one this year.