NO. 4218
HEMPSTEAD BROS
SHOWS
HOME OFFICE · FRANKFORT INDIANA · EST. 1903
THIS TICKET ENTITLES BEARER TO ONE (1) PRIZE AS NOTED BELOW · PRESENT AT MAIN PRIZE TENT · VOID IF DETACHED FROM STUB
Booth Operator Booth 7 — C. Vanlandingham
Date 8-19-54 · Thursday eve
Game Milk-Bottle Pyramid
Winnings 3 Bottles Down — 2nd Throw
Prize Size Medium · Stuffed Rabbit, Wht.
Value 25¢ × 4 — $1.00
Operator Initial C. V. V.
Redeem same evening at Main Prize Tent (north of Ferris wheel). Lost or detached stubs not honored. Hempstead Brothers Shows · Frankfort Indiana · Bonded & Licensed · Member, Showmen's League of America.
OPERATOR STUB · No. 4218
Booth
7
Game
Milk-Bottle
Prize
Med. Rabbit
PRIZES AWARDED AT BOOTH 7 THIS WEEK: 218
PRESENT FOR REDEMPTION
Booth 7 — Running Tally, Thursday eve
Small prizes |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| |||| || · 47
Medium prizes |||| |||| |||| ||| · 18
Large prizes |||| · 4
RUNNING TOTAL 69
good Thursday —
better than Tuesday opening night —
C. V. V., 8:48 pm
C. V. Vanlandingham · Booth 7 Twenty-six Augusts on these grounds. I knew that boy was Walter Bissett's the moment he laid down his quarter. Same hands as his daddy at the soda counter, sure as anything. String-lights warm above us all, packed earth below. A carnival man remembers a soda-jerk's father. Quiet between throw one and throw two, I leaned in: aim low at the bottom bottle, son. Boy hit it square and the whole pyramid let go.
Floyd Hempstead Sr., 1903 Started this outfit with three wagons and one tent at the Tippecanoe County Fair in the spring of '03. Borrowed forty dollars from my brother Marcus and a horse from my father-in-law. Took in fourteen dollars the first night and slept under the wagon. This concern has been a family concern every year since.
C. V. V. Company switched to carbonless two-part in '47. Before that we used a stub-book with a pink onionskin behind every ticket and a sheet of blue carbon you had to slip in by hand. Pearl came up with the change at the spring meeting. Saves about twelve seconds a ticket and the books reconcile cleaner.
Mrs. P. V. Vanlandingham · Main Prize Tent I ordered the spring '54 ticket-stock from Frankfort Print & Stationery the first week of March. Fifty thousand tickets across all fourteen booths, numbered consecutive from 0001 through 50000. We're at 4218 here on Thursday evening of the Allen County run, which is about right for the season.
C. V. V. I prefer booth 7 if the route-manager will give it to me. Sight-line straight from the prize tent — Pearl can see clear across when I'm getting busy and she'll come out to wave a small or a large my way. Twenty-two years of marriage and we still talk across a midway with our hands.
C. V. V. Real wooden bottles. Weighted, but weighted honest — about a pound and a quarter apiece, same top to bottom. Pyramid falls on three solid hits, every time, no trick to it. I won't run lead-bottoms. There are men on this circuit who will. I won't name them but I won't shake their hand at winter quarters either.
Doreen Fackelman · age 16 I wanted the medium one and not the large because Kathleen is small for nine and the big one would have crowded her pillow. She has had the chicken pox since Monday and Mother said she could not come to the fair this year. I am going to put the rabbit on the kitchen table so she sees it when she comes down in the morning.
Mrs. P. V. Vanlandingham Every operator stub comes back to the prize tent with the bearer. I tear them along the perforation when the prize goes out and drop them in the metal recipe-box my mother gave us in '32. At eleven we reconcile by lamplight in the office-trailer. The numbers always match. They have always matched.
W. Bissett · McCrory's soda counter BOUGHT THE COTTON CANDY AT THE LIONS CLUB BOOTH EIGHT-THIRTY-TWO BY THE FERRIS-WHEEL CLOCK. TEN CENTS. WALKED IT BACK FROM THE LIVESTOCK BARNS WITH DOREEN. SHARED IT BETWEEN US ON THE WAY TO THE MIDWAY. HER LEFT THUMB. THE PINK CAME OFF ON THE TICKET. I AM SAVING THE PAPER CONE.
C. V. V. Thursday at Allen County is the night the regulars come back. Tuesday is opening and Sunday is closing and the big crowd is Saturday, but Thursday is the one I like best — second-shift fathers off early, high-school kids on their first real dates, the 4-H still in the barns till nine. Twenty-six Thursdays I have stood behind this counter in Lima.
C. V. V. The terms-of-redemption line was drafted by the company lawyer in '38 after a misunderstanding at the Logansport fair. Nothing dramatic — a young man tried to redeem his stub two weeks late at the Tippecanoe stop. Pearl honored it anyway and the lawyer wrote the line afterward.
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Sept. 8, 1954 — first day of senior year — at my desk after school

Mr. Vanlandingham —

I do not know if this letter will ever get to you because Wendell says the carnival is in Marion Ohio this week and Findlay next week and then Bowling Green and then winter-quarters back in Indiana, but I am writing it anyway because I wanted you to know that the rabbit got home safe in the back of Mr. Bissett's Plymouth and that Kathleen woke up Friday morning August 20 at 7:14am with her fever broken and I gave her the rabbit at the kitchen table and she has named him Mister Cletus because I told her the name of the man who handed me the ticket.

Kathleen is 9 and the rabbit is on her pillow right now. Wendell asked me to homecoming three weeks ago and I said yes. We are going steady.

I am writing this from my desk in second-period American History where Mr. Pflugfelder is talking about the Northwest Ordinance and I have already read the chapter. Thank you for telling Wendell where to aim. He has talked about it three times. The advice you gave him is something he is going to remember when he is 47.

Sincerely yours,
Doreen Fackelman, junior class — I mean senior class, my first day —
Lima Central High, 818 South Metcalf Street, Lima Ohio.