Symco Rod & Kustom Weekender
Union, WISaturday, August 11, 2018
Symco is an unincorporated community located in the town of Union, Waupaca County, Wisconsin. Symco is located on Wisconsin Highway 22 at the Little Wolf River, 3.5 miles north-northeast of Manawa. The community is so small that its population is not counted separately when a census is taken. In other words, it’s a tiny town.
Despite its diminutive size, each August Symco hosts a big hot rod show that is well known throughout the Midwest and beyond. It is built around the “traditional hot rod” niche and features pre-1964 style hot rods and customs, vintage camping trailers, pinup girl contests, mini-bike drag races and parades and top-notch rockabilly music.
It has been interesting to watch how the community - largely comprised of farmers and factory workers - has embraced all of these things, along with the old school hot rod lifestyle. Local people talk about the hot rod show all year and anxiously await the weekend when the hot rods roll into town.
According to John Spence, who organizes the Symco Rod & Kustom Weekender, his August 10-11 event displayed 600 cars packed into the show grounds and 120 old-time travel trailers in the vintage camping area, which abuts the Wolf River. (which explains all the campers cooling off on rafts and float rubes in the water).
The show is held at a little private old-fashioned town built by a group of antique tractor enthusiasts called the Union Threshermen. The grounds include a grocery store, a church, a fire department, a post office, a saloon (which actually serves beer) and a Main Street. The place is called Unionville and is all operated by the Union Threshermen. One of Unionville’s unique attractions is a collection of gigantic Fairbanks-Moss power plants - from one-cylinder to six-cylinder – which all actually function.
It seemed like every car at the Symco Rod & Kustom Weekender had a story behind it. The vintage camping trailers had stories of their own to tell. One pair that we’re sure could talk were a Dodge Travco motorhome and a totally customized Flxible Vistaliner bus. More common sights were the “canned ham” rigs made by companies such as Shasta, Forester, Pathfinder and Cree.
By Sunday August 12, Symco was back to being a small Wisconsin village with the biggest crowd in town being the lunch-goers at Boondocks tavern, just a hop, skip and jump from the recently people-packed Unionville show grounds. But the community will be waiting until things start popping again next August.