George "Bud" Gilmore '71 delights East Coast fair patrons with Smokey's Greater Shows

Story by Marc Glass (Fall 2007 issue)

The raucous din of school kids clamoring for doughboys at the Fryeburg Fair competes with midway hawkers calling, “Quarter to play, quarter to win. Take your chances and c’mon in.” The calliope notes of the merry-go-round float above the roar of tractors straining to out-pull each other, and the piquant fumes of frying sausages beckon. Such are the sights, sounds and smells of George “Bud” Gilmore’s office for six months each year. If you’ve ever visited one of the scores of fairs and festivals that light up small towns for weeks at a time throughout summer in New England, you’ve probably savored the labors of Gilmore ’71, who, with wife Jeanette, owns and operates Smokey’s Greater Shows.

At the Fryeburg Fair, the largest and last fair of his 30-event season, Gilmore’s traveling carnival show rolls out 50 rides and more than 20 food stands supported by 100 employees. Command central amid the swirl of humanity and all the apparatus of fun is “the Oasis,” a tented under-the-big-top office, featuring an outdoor fireplace, television, wet bar and smorgasbord of tidbits, where Gilmore holds court with a steady stream of friends and fair officials, and responds to the endless details of running Smokey’s Greater Shows. On the picnic table that serves as his office desk are a cell phone, cordless phone and two-way radio that constantly chirp for his attention: more potatoes are needed for a french-fry booth, an account number is needed to complete a transaction, a ride operator is momentarily AWOL from the tilt-a-whirl delaying the ride’s opening. Gilmore handles each tug on his sleeve with measured, but somewhat gruff efficiency, neither barking orders, nor brooking fools.

Then a long-time fair-circuit friend stops by to say hello with his 5-year-old granddaughter, who has a bit of a sniffle. With a wink, Gilmore reaches into his pocket and hands the girl a half-inch stack of ride passes. “There now, does that make you feel better?” he asks. The kindergartener hugs the gift and melts Gilmore with a smile.

In moments stolen from the demands of running Maine’s largest agricultural fair, Gilmore explains that he took over the family business at the age of 28, when his father, Ron, passed away in December of his senior year, just as Gilmore was finishing 16 weeks of student teaching at Skowhegan High School. After a tour of duty with the Navy as a guided missile technician and a stint as an instrumentation technician with what was then the International Paper Mill in Jay, Gilmore pursued a bachelor’s degree in secondary education with a concentration in biology and earned semester grades to make any parent proud. (Sometimes higher than 4.0, he notes, as A-plus grades were awarded at the time.) With a semester’s worth of courses to go and the family business to run, Gilmore didn’t have the luxury of career indecision.

“I had a good rapport with professors by that time, so I could spend three days a week on campus with classes and the other four days drumming up business,” he said.

Drumming up business in the spring semester before fair season meant leaving his wife and son behind to travel throughout New England in search of bookings for the seven rides and two concession stands that comprised Smokey’s Greater Shows at the time. Long before it was fashionable in American higher education, Gilmore took up distance learning, finishing his degree by the light of motel-room desk lamps.

“Up until that point, I didn’t think my father actually earned his keep in the business,” said Gilmore, ruefully referring to the task of collecting accounts past due on contracts his father negotiated. “Then I started dealing with some of the thieves in this business.”

Born in Portland and raised in Freeman Township near the town of Strong, Gilmore’s childhood was a study in contrasts: half of the year was spent doing farm work, living in a house with no indoor plumbing or electricity; the other half was spent on the New England fair circuit, helping his brother, mother and father run a hot-dog stand and show Gene, a 3,200-pound, 31-hand Belgian mare, purported to be the largest in the world. (Winter residents of Florida, Gilmore and Jeanette still own the family farm in Freeman Township, spending time there at the bookends of the New England fair season.) In 1965, Ron, also known as “Smokey,” took over bookings, ticket sales and rent collection on a fair circuit for an acquaintance who defaulted on a personal loan. Smokey’s first ride, a tilt-a-whirl, was purchased for $22,000, and thus from humble beginnings grew the Greater Shows.

“Haying in a 100-degree heat and peeling poplar by hand or going to the fair? Which do you think I liked?” said Gilmore with a twinkle in his eye. “If we got to go somewhere where there was actually something going on, it was a helluvalot more fun.”

And the fun to be had at fairs hasn’t faded for Gilmore, as evinced by the Oasis, the souped-up golf cart featuring a Rolls Royce-like grille from which he patrols the fair’s 185 acres and the luxury RV that he and Jeannette call home for six months of the year. All the trappings of fun are necessary because running Smokey’s is no day at the races.

“This is a tough business with long hours. Employees can get grouchy,” he said. “Bad weather on a big, closing weekend can cut into attendance. My biggest concern is safety. There’s an awful lot of machinery and people out there.”

Helping him manage the 100-strong workforce and ride herd on all the attendant paperwork related to accounts receivable/payable, taxation and immigration is Jeannette, who, like Gilmore, learned the fair business from her family. While he commands from the Oasis, she deftly manages from an office that occupies a laterally expanding wing of the RV. Before she can answer a question about her role in running the show, Bocho, a work-visa-sponsored employee from Mexico, pokes his head into the RV and says, “¿Dondé está tu bebé?”

Jeanette laughs and says, “He wants to know where my baby is. He means Bud.” She seamlessly switches between Spanish and English as she engages Juan in a discussion about the logistics of food delivery and relays orders to a vendor on the phone. When complimented on her fluency, she demurs, claiming to know hardly any Spanish at all. “Oh, that’s nothing. That’s just what we do to make it work,” she said.

In from the Oasis, Gilmore stops by the RV to inquire about the extent of damage to their Florida home from a water pipe that ruptured in their absence. Mold has bloomed in the high humidity of a Florida summer, and Jeanette punctuates the details with some heavy sighs. In addition to ordering more food and fuel for the fair, dealing with the home-front headache couldn’t have come at a worse time for Jeanette. The full weight of six months on the road is bearing down hard. Sensing this is one of those moments when life on the fair circuit is far more work than fun, Gilmore redirects with some humor at his own expense.

“I let her do everything I can’t do, which is just about everything,” he said. “I’m just a figurehead around here.”

When asked if her husband is a Godfather-like figure in the fair business, Jeanette laughs heartily. “Godfather? No. Respected? Yes. He’s honest, genuine, a real Mainer,” she explains. “Whatever he says he’s going to do, he’s going to do. He’s got a good heart and folks know that.”