Depending on how you look at it, the Chagrin Pumpkin Roll is either a beloved, local rite of passage or a month-long crime spree culminating in a spasm of late-night destruction.
The tradition began in 1969 when Chagrin Falls High School students Alvin Smith and Steve and Allen Leach concocted the prank with the entire senior class stealing 69 pumpkins — one for each student — and chucking them down Grove Hill. Underclassmen carried on the tradition, and it was all downhill from there, so to speak.
Don’t bother looking for it on a local events calendar — the only people who know when it happens are a handful of seniors, who have dutifully spent the month of October plundering pumpkins from porches. Chagrin Falls locals won’t even bother putting out pumpkins until after the roll. Carved pumpkins are off-limits.
The pumpkins are stored at an undisclosed location until it’s time to roll. That’s when the serenity of this quaint, well-heeled suburb gets shattered. The students scamper up Grove Hill from Main Street, and chaos ensues. Students giddily rain pumpkins from the top on the hill. Once the hill is slick with pumpkin guts, the juniors and seniors, protected by crash helmets, slide down the hill on anything from purpose built sleds to upside down folding tables while a smattering of locals cheer them on — all under the watchful eyes of the Chagrin Falls Police Department.
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In recent years, the event has become less of the booze-fueled outlaw affair that it was in years past. The students alert the police a week before the roll and the CFPD provides officers to block the street. When asked how many crimes were being committed a Chagrin Falls police officer squinted his eyes and inhaled slowly, while considering the finer points of the Ohio Revised Code. After a lengthy pause he sighed, “Oh, a good deal of them”.
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