Reporting from Kenton, Ohio — During last weekend's Gene Autry Days festival here, a prominently displayed photograph showed the singing-cowboy movie star standing outside a local factory, surrounded by the proud employees.
It was taken on Aug. 8, 1938 -- famously remembered by locals as the day Autry came to pay his respects to this small city in northwestern Ohio, about 75 miles south of Toledo. Kenton Hardware Co., a key employer that made cast-iron toys but was struggling to survive the Depression, had that year introduced the new Gene Autry Repeating Cap Pistol.
It was an immediate bestseller to young cowpokes worldwide at 50 cents per gun, and a million had already been manufactured by the time Autry arrived to visit. For licensing his name and allowing a mold to be made of his own gun, Autry became the hero who saved the town's main employer -- and yes, he also got a cut of the revenue.
That same day, Autry and his horse, Champion, did five performances at downtown's Kenton Theatre. Some 4,500 people attended, according to contemporary accounts.
Kenton Hardware is long gone, its factory having shut down in 1952 as America lost interest in cast-iron toys. But Autry's influence on the city of 8,300 lives on via the festival. It just concluded its 16th year at the Hardin County Fairgrounds -- not far from the still-standing but vacant factory. It's a salute not only to the Cowboy but to a slice of American history that seems both similar to our own age (tough economic times) and very different (making toys in a Midwest factory).
Among those the event attracted this year was 70-year-old Richard Dzwonkiewicz, from Grayslake, Ill., a retired military careerist dressed as a white-hatted cowboy Autry for the festival's look-alike contest.
"As you participate in this, that long-ago event becomes more meaningful," he explains, as visitors come over to take his picture. "It's still being remembered today, and all of us are part of that memory."
Autry-approved
The festival, run by the Hardin County Chamber & Business Alliance, started as a way to help pay for a new community building at the fairgrounds. Autry, still alive in 1994, approved it. (He died in 1998 at age 91.)
