This past weekend, we took the kids down to the middle of a Delaware
to watch pumpkins being shot out of air cannons, catapults, and trebuchets. It
seemed like a good idea at the time. My first inkling that it was not going to
be a family-friendly event (as advertised) should have been the spelling. While
I understand that pumpkin chucking is a mouthful and doesn’t have the same
verve as “punkin’ chunkin’”, any event that sounds like it could host a Honey Boo Boo family reunion probably
isn’t going to be PG. Also, I should have used the brain God gave me to realize
that you have to be drunk and stupid to think standing next to a jury-rigged
piece of pressurized steel is ever a good idea.
The second big hint that this was no ordinary fall festival
was the parking lot. I haven’t seen that level of tailgating since Buffet. This
was professional-level revelry. Corn hole? Check. Bocci? Check. Beer pong?
Check. Some weird thing with PVC piping and rocks on a sling that my husband
called poor-man’s horse shoes? Check. These people didn’t just throw a football
in the trunk and call it a day. These people threw the better part of a Home
Depot in the back of a pickup and built themselves something glorious. I can
only imagine what the overnight camping parking lot looked like. They probably
had full wet bars, hot tubs, and tiki huts over there.
The redneck ingenuity of the parking lot carried over into
the venue. There were people wearing bandoliers of beer cans, belts made of
beer cans, and for one particularly Gandalf-loving group, walking sticks made
of duct-taped Budweiser cans. The more they drank, the higher the staff. I’m
pretty sure that by the end of the day, they could have used those things to
pole vault. This wasn’t a Red Solo cup event – this was a drink straight from
the bottle until the bottle ran out type of event – all while sitting on
stacked futons, hastily-constructed viewing platforms, or in one case, a couch
being pulled around on an ATV. This was ground zero for alcohol poisoning and
it was really quite something to behold.
Honestly, it is not like I blame them. Waiting for pumpkins
to be launched thousands of feet in the air takes a while. You’ve got to do
something to fill the time. We actually wound up getting to the event right as
competition was ending. The rest of the day was spent in open fire mode where
the sky was filled with flying pumpkins. The key is to make them splat, not
explode. Also important was the ability to operate your machinery without
spilling your beer. We watched one group of Darwin-award nominee’s use a socket
wrench to hand crank a wooden contraption that looked closer to a torture
device than a catapult. They couldn’t get a lot of momentum going because well,
they were using a socket wrench, and because they refused to put down their cans
of Bud Light. We all cheered enthusiastically only to watch the pumpkin pathetically
roll a whole five feet into the dirt. I was just happy the poor kid standing
closest to it still had a hand. These machines are not exactly following OSHA
standards for safety. In fact the next day, one of the bigger air cannons
actually exploded, shooting pieces of scrap metal hither and yon. Safety was
definitely not first in the minds and hearts of the crowd or the competitors.
I have to be fair and state that while this crowd was raucous,
it wasn’t rude. Sure, people were falling down drunk, but they were laughing
when they fell. Yes, they did walk around in very large groups usually in
matching outfits (camo overalls were popular for the men, flannel shirts/cowboy
boots/Daisy Dukes for the women), but they always politely moved aside when my
family came through. At one point, we were all in a large group that was being
filmed for the Discovery Channel. While the Mythbuster trio of Tory, Kari, and
Grant did their thing up front, the group of 20-somethings next to us did their
best to get my kids to the front of the crowd and in camera range. The fact
that they did this while slurring every other word, uses curses in place of articles
of speech, and practically offered to beat the shit out of anyone who got in my
kids way was just, well, darling. Their eyes couldn’t focus, but their hearts
were in the right place.
We left right before the rain moved in and walking back
through the mostly deserted parking lot was just as entertaining. There were a
number of grills just left high and dry as their owners realized the inherent difficulty
of getting a burning hot grill back into the trunk after a day of cooking
burgers. There was the requisite ball playing and some really poor parenting choices.
Letting your three year old ride a mini-ATV the size of an average car tire
through a parking lot is a great idea if the parking lot is empty. However,
when it is full of oversized trucks and SUVs all trying to pull out, many of
which had to be driven by people way beyond the legal limit, well, that just
seems like you don’t really want to take that child home with you, at least not
in anything larger than a box.
In the end, a good time was had by all. Except for the pumpkins.
I don’t think they enjoyed it one bit.
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