Everett and Delores Smith gather around the 1947 Jeep that was almost part of the family on their Blairsburg farm. From left are daughters Carol Lewis, Sherry Peck, Kathy Paull, Ruth Cramer, father Everett Smith, daughter Elaine Robertson, mother Delores Smith, and son LeeClair Smith.

BLAIRSBURG — Never under-estimate what one hard-working farm family, teams of dedicated church ladies, and scores of energetic 4-H’ers can accomplish.

Sixty years ago, on a farm-turned-metropolis, Hamilton County welcomed the world to the farm of Everett and Delores Smith. Over the course of three days in September, an estimated 300,000 visitors from Iowa, the nation, and even around the globe, came to see the very best of American agriculture on display at the 10th Annual National Farm Progress Show.

When the Farm Progress Show opens for its 70th run at Boone today, it will hard to match the magic and excitement that filled the air in Hamilton County for those three days, Sept. 18 to 20, 1963.

“It was a really big deal at the time,” says Pam (Holt) Doolittle, who grew up in the area. “I remember being amazed at how they turned a huge field into places where you could walk, see the exhibits, buildings and tents. It was just huge for the community.”

And it took a community to make it happen. Neighbors opened their barns to stable horses of the Iowa National Guard to help police the grounds and direct traffic. Women from eight area churches, from Blairsburg to Williams to Kamrar, floured up their rolling pins and cooked up a storm to provide hearty farm meals and desserts at the food tents. The 4-H kids were responsible for the cold drinks, according to Daily Freeman-Journal news reports of the time.

Now a mainstay of American agriculture, the Farm Progress Show was still in its infancy when it came to the Smith farm in 1962. At the time, it rotated between Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. But there was no permanent location, as there is today at Boone and its sister site at Decatur, IL. Back then, it was farm families that hosted the event, giving show managers wide access to their farming operation for a full growing season, and allowing thousands of visitors to tramp around their farm for three days in the fall.

Everett Smith is remembered by family and friends as a man who embraced changed, loved to learn new ideas, and was always trying to improve his farming operation. Those characteristics alone made the Smith farm a welcome location for Farm Progress officials to choose for the show.

“Dad, all through his life, even when he got older, he didn’t just stay with the old way of doing things,” says Carol (Smith) Lewis, the eldest daughter of Everett and Delores.

She recalls her mother as equally industrious.

“Mother was a very hard worker,” Lewis says. “We had a cow for the family and she would make her own cottage cheese, butter, everything.”

The Smiths had an active cattle operation, a great number of chickens, a few hogs, a one-time dairy operation, sometimes some sheep, and a big spread of open land.

Farms were smaller in the 1960s, but the Smiths were blessed with a larger operation for the time.

“The Farm Progress Show people probably liked the size of the farm, the location, and the way it laid,” says LeRoy Peck, son-in-law of Everett and Delores. “The main part of the farm was 480 acres, all in one piece. At the time, 480 acres (more than half a section) was pretty good size.”

And then there was the location, as Peck noted. It couldn’t have been nicer. The farm was just two miles north of Highway 20 and one mile west of Highway 69, leaving just one mile of gravel to accommodate the massive traffic that flowed into the showgrounds.

This was before there was even one mile of interstate highway in Hamilton County and the Blairsburg junction of highways 69 and 20 was truly a crossroads of America. Urban legend even has it that Elvis and Priscilla once stopped there and fueled up on home-cooking at the old M & M Cafe. The story might just be urban legend, but it’s also completely plausible given the important nature of that crossroads.

“The first M & M Cafe was really a little log cabin,” recalls Doolittle. “Then they built a more modern building.

Doolittle spent her childhood at the junction where her parents, Clarence, known as ‘Bus,’ and Agnes Holt operated Holt’s 66 Service Station.

In addition to full service for every automobile that drove up to the pumps, the Holts operated a fuel oil and propane business. The entire ‘Blairsburg Corner,’ was well known in Iowa.

“It was a thriving spot,” Doolittle says. “It was a hot spot, and then the interstate came through years later and things really slowed down.”

Doolittle’s father passed away in 1960 but her mother continued to operate the station until it could be sold. Doolittle was a senior, a member of the first graduating class of the newly formed Northeast Hamilton Community School District, when the Farm Progress Show came to the Smith farm in 1962. Along with a host of other young women, she was recruited to become a model for some of the women’s events at the show.

“I modeled an ugly green jumper,” she recalls with a laugh. “It was made from a pattern out of the Wallace’s’ Farmer magazine.”

Doolittle says the two-piece jumper was made of light weight wool, green with black checks, and worn with a green blouse underneath.

“It was fun,” she says of her modeling experience. Even if that jumper wasn’t quite her style.

At least she didn’t have to make the garment herself, and modeling on stage at the Farm Progress Show remains a fun memory.

The Farm Progress Show has always strived to appeal to the entire farm family. In addition to shows and displays for the farm wives, a model home constructed on site has long been a part of the show.

Daughter Sherry (Smith) Peck recalls the model home built for the show at her parents’ farm as a typical ranch home, or what today might be called ‘mid-century modern.’ The home was sold after the show and moved from the property.

Her parents continued to reside on the Blairsburg farm until retiring in 2005. They have since passed away and the farm is no longer in the Smith family. But wonderful memories live on.

“We learned to work,” Sherry says. “My job was gathering eggs. We had about 1,000 cage layers.”

Chores came before having fun, but there was plenty of fun to be had. As Lewis recalled, when the brooder house was empty, they would clean it out and play house right inside.

“I think it helped us have imagination, and have the ability to think and plan,” Lewis says. “It was just our made-up fun. Nobody had to program anything.”

As the oldest child, Lewis says she was first to learn to drive a tractor and first to drive a WWII era Jeep that was a workhorse on the farm.

Memories of the three days of the show pale in comparison to the years of memories with their parents and siblings on the farm, according to both Peck and Lewis.

“I remember being up on the stage when they introduced the family, and I remember seeing things in the field,” Lewis says.

Another plus for the Blairsburg site was the proximity to the Webster City airport, which became what was dubbed “the busiest airport in the world,” for those three days. Corporate planes are a common means of transportation as ag business does business at the Farm Progress Show.

Even Kraft Foods got into the act for the 1962 show, as Peck recalls.

“The biggest thing I remember from the show is taking a helicopter ride over the farm,” says Peck. “It was the Kraft Foods helicopter.”

But perhaps the biggest event of all for the show is when the Soviet Minister of Agriculture made a visit on one day of the show. It was part of a Soviet tour through Hamilton County as the Soviet delegation also visited the Homer Danielson farm at Ellsworth.

As The Daily Freeman-Journal reported at the time, the Soviet officials enjoyed taking in the sites of American agriculture at its finest, and even took part in a “hearty conversation” with some teen-agers at the show who questioned him about education in the Soviet Union. He reportedly did not care for their questions and walked away.

The visit came at a time of increasing tensions between the United States and Soviet Union. Wire reports carried in the The Daily Freeman-Journal at this time were noting a strange build-up of Cuban troops near the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Less than a month later President Kennedy would go on national TV to tell Americans about Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba. It was perhaps the hottest moment of the long Cold War.

But here in Hamilton County, it was all about agriculture, and sharing new and better ways to feed the world. The late Lynn Habben, long-time Hamilton County Extension Director, was one of the escorts of the delegation, using his own friendly diplomacy to make all welcome.

“The whole show was all about advances in farming and machinery,” recalls Doolittle. “It was well received and well attended, and a wonderful thing to have happen in the community. It was a good of Everett Smith to host it, because I’m sure it was hard to get that land back in production for awhile.”

Indeed, LeRoy Peck agreed that returning the exhibit site to production was one of the biggest challenges to life after the show.

“It was not good for the land,” he recalls. “The parking area was pretty hard packed and it took a number of years to get that back into shape to really farm well.”

One thing that does remain from the show is that old Jeep the family used around the farm. It was bought a neighbor who restored it and still finds it handy to use around the farm.

It was just three days in September, in a world that was rapidly changing, but it left a lifetime of memories for the people who helped make it all happen.