Gypsum’s pie festival, car show a winner

Paul Kruse is first and foremost a small-town promoter. He’s also a “car guy” and a passionate lover of pies.

So why not mix all of that good stuff together in his hometown and offer it up to others in the form of Gypsum’s unique Kansas Pie Festival and Car Show? Despite heavy rains that threatened to cut this Saline County town of approximately 400 souls off from the rest of the world on Memorial Day weekend, the event came off in fine fashion, packing an estimated 2,000 people in for the day-long festivities.

“It was what I was expecting it to be,” said Kruse of the third annual edition of the event. In that time, the car show has more than tripled the number of entries, with 231 registered this year.

“And there were more that showed up after registration closed,” Kruse noted.

The whole thing began years ago as a gathering of friends and family invited to a private party that ended with a half-dozen cars parading up and down Gypsum’s main street with one of the attendees chosen as the grand marshal.

Three years ago, it evolved into the Pie Festival and Car Show, where the owners of vintage cars and trucks come to win pies instead of trophies.

There is no registration fee for cars or spectator admission fee for the event.

“People come here for the hometown atmosphere,” said Kruse, who depends on his wife, Sandy, and some dedicated volunteers to make the event work.

This year, it took 160 pies to make it work, with 50 of them handed out as trophies.

Interestingly, Kruse wasn’t always interested in classic cars.

“I was late to the car hobby. I was probably 33 years old before I bought my first collector car,” he said. “I didn’t grow up reading hot rod magazines, I read cattle magazines,” he said. He worked many years as a dairy farmer.

“Credit goes to Dick (Spracklin) for getting me into cars. He kept insisting that I go to car shows with him,” Kruse said.

He began buying and selling old cars through the internet. When they became harder and harder to find, he switched to collector car parts and eventually got into buying and selling whole engines, all the while holding down a steady full-time job.

His collection includes a former “clown car,” an altered wheelbase Model A that can do wheelies, which he has owned not once, but twice. There is also his “pie wagon,” a bright red and white 1955 Ford sedan delivery, which carries the Kansas Pie Festival and Car Show logo on its rear panels, and a sweet turquoise and white 1957 Chevy 4-door hardtop.

Proceeds from the sale of pies, commemorative T-shirts and donations go into a community fund. Last year, the fund was able to pay for a downtown public-address system.

Sandy Kruse reported on Facebook that this year’s event put $3,000 into the Pie Festival account, which Paul hopes may underwrite some sort of art project like a downtown mural.

Main Street was filled with out-of-town visitors who enjoyed local eating spots, vendors of all kinds of collectibles and decorative items. Pie and homemade ice cream was available as well.

With the growth in number of show cars on hand and a soggy show field, parking was an issue, with vehicles parked in every available spot east of Main Street.

“We went from 75 cars the first year to 154 last year and 231 this year. I can see the trend and it looks like work,” Paul Kruse said. “We’ve reached the capacity of the town and I think it’s time to rethink things.

“It’s not my goal to grow it in the future. It’s important to me to keep this small-town vibe downtown. My idea is to advertise it more in the food, cruise and travel magazines, and to emphasize the pie part of the festival.”

His plan is to transform the event into the Kansas Pie Festival and Old Car Cruise-In, where there will be no designated parking area or judging of cars. People will be able to come and go as they like and they may be awarded pies for their cars at any time during the event.

It’s really all about sharing that small-town feeling and having fun, and a little fine-tuning should make sure that things stay on the right track.

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 4:22 PM with the headline "Gypsum’s pie festival, car show a winner."