Every summer when I was young I looked forward to a single week. A week filled with face painting, cotton candy, Tilt-a-Whirls and turtle races. Turtle races? Not usually a part of a normal festival, but integral to the festival I loved.

The festival was Turtle Days, held to remember a four hundred pound turtle who forever changed the small town of Churubusco, Indiana.

I never thought to ask anyone how Turtle Days evolved, but one summer when I was eight I returned to my grandma's house to have her ask me if I knew the story of Oscar. As I said no, I sat down next to her on the couch and listened as she told me the most unbelievable true story I had ever heard.

It all started in 1898. Oscar Fulk, a local farmer, claimed that there was a giant turtle living in his lake. No one paid much attention to his claim and he left the turtle alone. Years passed and he sold the farm. The new owners saw the turtle a few times, but determined that it was a cow who had decided to take a dip. (I had to interrupt the story here and ask my grandma how many cows "took a dip" in lakes, but she didn't seem to know.) More time passed and the farm was again sold, this time to Gale Harris.

Harris often let his two brothers-in-law fish on the lake, now named Fulk Lake for the farm's original owner, and they knew nothing of the previous turtle sightings. But one day in July of 1948, as the men were fishing, the turtle emerged and took their fishing poles. (Again, I had to interrupt the story and ask why a turtle would want to take their fishing poles. Grandma said the turtle probably didn't want anyone fishing on his lake.) According to the men, the turtle's back was as big as a dining room table! A few days later, Gale himself saw the turtle from the roof of his barn and verified that the turtle was indeed that large. But after these two sightings, the creature stayed underwater for almost a year.

Then in March of 1949 he re-emerged and was seen by a group of townspeople who tried to capture the reptile. The men made a trap out of chicken wire and stakes and were able to capture the giant turtle, but when they tried to lift him out of the water he broke free of the trap.

During the trapping, though, Del Winegardner took pictures and some film footage of the giant turtle. However, the film is now unavailable to view, though two other men at the scene that day swore they saw the pictures and film did really show the turtle's great size. (Now the story was getting good. I started imagining thieves coming into Winegardner's house secretly in the night and taking the proof, or the turtle eating his camera. But Grandma told me that my imagination was running wild and that the film was simply too old to get a good picture of the turtle.)

A story on the turtle and the attempt to catch it appeared in neighboring community papers and soon it was receiving national attention. One newspaper named the turtle "Oscar" while another nicknamed him "The Beast of 'Busco." Reporters and spectators from all over the country flocked to Fulk Lake, hoping to catch a glimpse of Oscar. Each day there came reports of new people who claimed to have seen Oscar, including a reporter from the Indianapolis Times and a man claiming he was with the Cincinnati Zoo.

By the end of March there were over 400 visitors each day coming to the farm and Harris and his friends quit their jobs in order to leave free time to hunt for Oscar. A professional trapper from Tennessee was brought in to hunt the beast, as was a diver from Chicago. Letters, addressed simply to "Turtle Town, USA," arrived by the hundreds. (This explained the "Welcome to Turtle Town USA" sign I always passed on the way to Grandma's house.) Some encouraged the Harris' attempts to capture Oscar, while others scorned them for keeping up such a hoax. Syracuse, Indiana even thought about suing Gale Harris, claiming that Oscar was a resident of Lake Wawasee in Syracuse and that Harris had lured him away.

In April Oscar was seen coming to the surface for some fish and he was secured by Harris and friends with a net. But Oscar tore a hole in the net and was gone before they could gather enough men to pull him out. Since the traps weren't working, Harris tried another idea. In May a 200 pound female sea turtle was put into the lake to lure Oscar out. Still, Oscar remained elusive and people started to wonder if Oscar was in fact a male turtle. (I had already thought of that idea! I bet I could've caught the turtle. Grandma just laughed and told me I probably could have.)

By summer, interest had died down, but Harris and his partners continued to try and lure Oscar out. Nothing worked, so in September Harris decided to drain the lake. Using an old tractor and pump, he was able to drain seventy million gallons of water from Fulk Lake into a ditch. Interest in the story was reviving, and people were now paying twenty-five cents to enter the farm. (Twenty-five cents? I would've charge at least a dollar, but Grandma told me that that was a big amount back then.) The water in the lake was now only five feet deep, but Oscar was still nowhere to be seen. Harris figured that Oscar had gone into another lake through some underground springs and channels. He thought that if he drained the lake he could find the channels Oscar was using. (This made me question the story a bit. How did all 400 pounds of Oscar fit into the underground channels? But grandmas don't make up a stories, do they?) In December, Harris's plans came to a halt when his tractor broke down and Harris himself was placed in the hospital with appendicitis. By the time he returned home, rain had filled the lake almost completely back to its normal depth and all attempts to capture Oscar were stopped.

The next year Harris sold the farm. All the spectators had trampled his crops and reporters had run up his phone and electricity bills. The farm and its contents were auctioned off and Harris moved to a nearby city.

Even though Oscar was never captured, he is still remembered by those who witnessed the hunt. Few people now admit that he really existed, even those who had claimed to see him. But Harris and his wife still believe in Oscar and know in their hearts that he still exists.

And while people may not believe Oscar ever existed, they still celebrate the fame that the story brought to Churubusco. That's how Turtle Days was started, and why it continues even to today.