SUMMERS COUNTY W.Va. (Hinton News) – I never realized how big of an influence my grandfather Bernard Thompson had on me growing up. From his love of antiques and local history, his fascination with odd and unusual “junk”, his freehand ability, and others. Granddad helped shape the “quirky” historian I am today, ha.
He passed away in 2018, and I am still uncovering things nearly eight years later. I believe I had talked about the carnival trailer he built when my mother was a child. This was just one of the many “side gigs” he had his hands in at that time. From having a junk yard in Talcott, a Christmas Tree farm behind his house, building the Travlin Hillbillies truck and showing it throughout the two Virginias, having other antique cars, having rental properties, operating Thompsons Garage, and selling coal out of it in Talcott. He managed to find time to have a carnival tied in with other things he did as well.
The drawing was his design for it that he drew in November 1972. So the first time it was operational was in 1973. He designed it as a box he could slide on a trailer, his father, O.D. Tompson built. And then it could be slid off in the yard when it wasn’t being used. It sat there and was used as an outbuilding till I tore it down in 2013.
Mom told me the main place she remembers taking it was the Alderson 4th of July celebration, Pioneer Days in Marlinton, a festival that was held in St. Albans and Nitro, West Virginia, at that time, and the Hinton Water Festival.
He named it “Jake’s Kiddie Carnival”. It had a tub ball, a spin the wheel game, a pull a prize game, a race car game, and others. He sold things as well. We still have the games in storage. The photo you see here is the first time he took it out. I am thinking of Alderson. We still have the sign he used with it, the money box with the ledger book, and quite a few of the toy prizes.
