McGinn: Fair at New Boston keeps history alive

McGinn

The work of author Allan Eckert frequently chronicled the area's history, and that history is on display at the Fair at New Boston.

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 8:58 AM Friday, September 2, 2011

We all have those movies we’re embarrassed to admit we’ve never seen.

For me, the list includes “Gone With the Wind,” “The Matrix,” “Caddyshack” (for some reason, though, I’ve seen “Caddyshack II”), “Blade Runner” and “Blazing Saddles.”

I crossed “Toy Story” off my list just this year.

I have a list of books that I never got around to reading, either, but if I named them all, you’d think even less of me.

This time of year, though, I’m reminded that I still really need to read “The Frontiersmen,” the now-late Allan Eckert’s Pulitzer-nominated 1967 history of white settlement in this region.

In fact, just the other day, as my son and I drove through George Rogers Clark Park as it was being readied for this weekend’s 29th annual Fair at New Boston, I once again got the strong urge to read it.

“The Frontiersmen” isn’t the kind of book that shames you into reading it.

That honor usually goes to something like “A Tale of Two Cities.”

But Eckert’s book, which sold a million copies in part because it reads like a novel, brought to life the people and tumultuous events that forged what was then the Northwest Territory.

The Fair at New Boston literally brings many of those same people to life through the use of costumed re-enactors.

Some of what we know — or think we know — about Simon Kenton, Tecumseh and Gen. George Rogers Clark is the result of Eckert’s work.

Each Labor Day weekend, they all come together west of town at the site of Clark’s 1782 raid on Tecumseh’s boyhood village to peacefully talk about our storied past.

Costumed artisans also line the grounds each year to hawk their wares much like they did here in the Ohio Country in the era between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

Eckert’s book — the first in a series that told of how the Americans killed and conned the Indians out of their lands east of the Mississippi — not surprisingly found a rabid fan base locally.

Clancy Brown, the actor originally from Urbana, has long claimed Eckert as his favorite author.

Now seen as this area’s founding father, Kenton is buried in Urbana and was almost forgotten until “The Frontiersmen” came along.

“I didn’t know much about him, and nobody else did either,” Eckert told me back in 2001 at his Bellefontaine home during my first visit with him.

I actually interviewed Eckert several times, and only after reading the news in July of his death at age 80 did I realize how much of an honor that was.

While he had moved to California to finish writing a book on the march of whites to the Pacific — his 41st book, “The Infinite Dream,” comes out Sept. 15 — the obituary we ran seemed almost too brief.

I realize it’s bad form to criticize the company that allows you to make your student loan payment each month, but the story made no mention at all of “The Frontiersmen.”

Nor did it mention Eckert’s 1970 Emmy win as a staff writer for “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”

He wrote 12 years worth of episodes of the classic Marlin Perkins safari show, which was the thing that most interested me when I first was sent to Bellefontaine to talk to him.

But the longer I live in Springfield, the more I feel the need to read “The Frontiersmen.”

So why haven’t I?

Well, a part of me has never matured past 11th grade — I’ve always found it more enjoyable to just watch the movie version of a book.

The Fair at New Boston serves that function well.

Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.

How to go

What: The Fair at New Boston

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Where: George Rogers Clark Park

Admission: $8; $5 for active military; $3 for ages 6 to 12; free for kids younger than 5.

Of interest

Fans of Allan Eckert will want to meet Tecumseh at noon both days in the fair’s Indian Village.

George Rogers Clark will make his appearance at 12:15 p.m. in the Fairmaster’s Tent, with Daniel Boone (one of Clark’s soldiers when they marched on the present-day fair site) there at 3:15 p.m.

And new this year, a pistol duel will take place (complete with fake blood) outside the Hickory Tavern at 5 p.m.

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