After 40 years of never going to the Oregon or Washington State Fairs, my wife, Gwynne, & I visited both of them on consecutive weekends, WA being second. We arrived at noon and I hadn’t eaten in anticipation of filling up on fair food so upon entry it was straight to the teriyaki in a hollowed out pineapple booth, including a side of turkey leg tacos. For drink, I bought my first Black Cherry Budweiser seltzer in honor of the Budweiser Clydesdales horses that were there: the first time I’d seen them live since college when they came to my TKE frat house.
Just the previous weekend we’d certainly seen enough 4-H & FFA exhibits so we searched out the more esoteric events, like the giant vegetable weigh-in, of which the pumpkins were the showcase. Not that people were interested but Gwynne loved I. The announcer, Joe, told us that this was a hot year and the several days over 100 was hard on growers so there were only 1/10th the amount of entries as usual. In fact, the Junior winner’s pumpkin was only 43 lbs, same as the giant squash, but because he was the only contestant, he got the blue ribbon.
The 1st contestant pumpkin weighed 130 lbs. and took 2 years to get that big. I didn’t know anything about growing giant stuff but I must be a natural weight guesser because I got the next one right, which happened to be Joe’s entry. He said he’d been showing pumpkins at the fair since the 1970s, and this year’s pumpkin was grown from the seeds of his 2013 world champion which weighed a hefty 2363 lbs. In comparison, this year’s pumpkin was an unimpressive 815.5 lbs. Joe said, “that would have been a world’s record in 1991: the pumpkins have gotten a lot bigger!” The runner up weighed a measly 388.5 lbs.; and the ugliest pumpkin (I made that category up myself) was 131.5 lbs.
On the way out, Gwynne saw a sign for sale in a vendor booth that said: “I don’t have my ducks in a row, I have squirrels and they’re everywhere.” I told her that was cute but we have moles and they’re tearing up our lawn.
Pumpkin Weigh-In
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Martin Hash
- Posts: 18245
- Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2010 2:02 pm
Pumpkin Weigh-In
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