Given that it's 90 degrees and humid in DC right now, it's a little hard to believe that it's almost time for the annual pilgrimage to Millsboro, Delaware. Not to dispute the importance of sitting around the groaning board and disassembling a turkey and its accoutrements, but come on, that's hardly the most important thing about the coming month. Did you forget? Did you fail to mark your appointment book? Is it not written in letters of fire upon your lids?
Knave, know thou well that the first weekend of November, as has been ordained from time immemorial, we honor the understanding that squash do not wish to live after the feast of All Saints. They dream of catching air. They dream of glorious death. They dream, in short, of Punkin Chunkin.
Punkin Chunkin, which is usually held on a particularly isolated bit of Delaware cornfield encircled by pines, feels like a cross between a medieval miracle fair, a county fair, and an air show, heavily salted with rural Americana. You’ll see GOP stickers on the Harleys and NASA technology in the competing engines, little kids learning to calculate trajectories, historians trying to pin a date on the different catapults, and amateur movie critics wondering whether "Pirates of the Punkin Chunkin" is actually a better choice than, say, "The Return of the Killer Cucurbit."
The machines are arrayed in a rough L shape on the field, with the big guns along the bottom edge of the field and the smaller machines running along the upright, facing away from the audience. The basic rules vary only slightly for the different age- and machinery type-based categories: The pumpkin, which should weigh between 8 and 10 pounds, must be intact during flight; ignominious disintegration is scored as pie. Scoring in all categories except Costume/Theatrical is based on distance, so teams have up to 3 hours to find their shots, dispatching helmeted riders on ATVs head toward the treeline after many shots (for the more powerful engines, which can send a pumpkin about a mile, laser triangulation—of course, what else?—is used to give the riders an idea of where to look). Air cannons cannot be made out of PVC, for reasons that became spectacularly although nonfatally clear two years ago, and explosives are also illegal.
Each group of machines competes separately, roughly in order of size: First there is the spectacularly loud firing of the giant guns, whose shots are usually heralded by an air horn and crackly loudspeaker announcements of "fire in the hole"; then there is the terrifying thrum of the giant centrifuges; and then homemade catapults, trebuchets, glorified slingshots, and human-powered machines of varying levels of ingenuity take turns going for distance. Once the smaller engines take over, you’ve actually got a better chance of seeing the pumpkins en l’aire for the full arc; shots by the larger machines go up so fast that you probably won’t see the squash until it reaches the crest and starts heading back to earth. The day ends with a flinging free-for-all, pumpkins crashing everywhere on the field as the sun sinks into the west.
For the audience, the competition is definitely the main attraction, especially with devices like the trebuchet that require slow, suspense-building preparation as they are winched into position. (Nota bene: The machines are built by amateurs. Misfires are possible, especially among the smaller machines, and the audience is only about 30 feet back, so keep a sharp eye out. Ten pounds at 32 feet per second squared is funny until it looks like it’s right overhead, 200 feet up, and heading your way with all the dispatch gravity can muster.) But there are also carnival rides, bands, beer and fried-food booths, charity raffles, a recipe contest, and a wondrous array of pumpkin-laced foods for sale. The pumpkin funnel cake is a perennial favorite, but the pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing is also worth a couple of bucks.
Finally, at the end of the day, and after numerous warnings to teams that it’s time for a cease-fire, the audience is invited into the pit to chat with the engineers and support staff. Take the time (and possibly a flashlight) and clomp across the deeply rutted cornfield to see Yankee Siege’s 4.5-ton counterweight, and let your own dreams take wing.
No comments:
Post a Comment