In their pursuit for the world ’s heavyweight champion , some pumpkin growers will do almost anything .
Don Black live a four - room house in upstate New York , only a few nautical mile from the Canadian border . To say his House is a bachelor diggings is to be civil . Don ’s walls are bare – except for a few world - title-holder pumpkin plaques . Don used to have many more , but he burn them in outrage last year . Don ’s laundry is heap in wads all over the floor . He has two dressers , but all the drawers are filled with 300 baby solid food jars containing pumpkin cum . These drawers are the nursing home of what Don claims is the earthly concern ’s only pumpkinseedmuseum . Why does n’t he keep his clothes in the drawers ?
“ Then where would I put my seeds ? ” he call for .
To take in a living , Don laces bedroom slippers together in a factory about 21 miles away . On a good day , when Led Zeppelin pump through his headphones , he can spike 108 pairs in eight hour . He gets pay by the piece , and Don says he makes “ $ 16,000 a year if I ’m lucky . ”
Don leaves for work at 5:30 a.m. , but before he goes , as well as two or three times every night he slog out behind his house to thepumpkin patch – a patch so straight , so have sex , its hard to believe it is tended by the same man . The dry land is as dark and damp as devil ’s food patty . Don comes out to check for interloper – woodchuck , deer , stripling or , the most pernicious , saboteurs .
Don , 38 , is not paranoid . He is hardheaded . Could he give it , he might try what Norm Craven , his curse across theCanadian border , has installed in his patch – sensors and cameras .
“ the great unwashed do n’t want anyone to uprise a bigger pumpkin , ” Craven say . “ No matter what . ”
Don Black and Norm Craven , along with about 5,000 competitive raiser , have been trying to grow what was once consider insufferable , unthinkable , the four - second mil of pumpkindom : a 1,000 - pounder .
It will be “ like a synodic month landing , ” tell Ray Waterman , chairwoman of one of three feud pumpkin establishment . Wrote Tom Norlin in the outpouring issue of the Midwestern Pumpkin Growers newssheet “ The winner will be remembered and written about for generations . ”
Last class , Herman Bax of Brockville , Ontario , maturate a 990 - pound pumpkin , the largest in history . Some credited the seed . Others the atmospheric condition . Herman praised his septic bed , over which he grew his pumpkin vine . Herman ’s neighbor and friend , Barry Dejong , originate the second largest in history – 945.5 pounds . Together they split $ 28,000 in prize money – not risky for two 30 - year - quondam guy who help make Tide soap in a Procter & Gamble factory .
Herman sold his pumpkin to a restaurant outsideSan Franciscothat hosts an one-year pumpkin fete . TwoLas Vegascasinos bid for Barry ’s autumn pumpkin . The achiever , the Excalibur , flew Barry , his pumpkin and his married woman out to Vegas for a week and greet Barry and his wife with a stretch limousine . The pumpkin went on display in the gambling casino lobby wearing a treetop , a security guard by its side round the clock . Two days before Halloween , the pumpkin was truck to Hollywood , where a professional pumpkin sculpturer waited to sculpt the world ’s big manual laborer - o - lantern on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno . But at the last second , Leno was a no - go . Because the pumpkin had spend 10 days under the spotlight , ” lamented Barry , “ it had get to get soupy in spite of appearance . ” Barry’schampion pumpkinended its enamor life in a Hollywood dumpster .
The Scotch philosopher David Hume once save that covetousness and ambition force back all work force . As these matching desires drive the Trumps and Madonnas and Gingriches and Iacoccas , they also motivate the Pumpkin People . On a smaller scale for sure , but with no less wildness . These men and few charwoman occur from all manner of walking of life . They are fireman and farmers , park rangers and stockbrokers , engineers and appliance salesmen . Like all backyardgardeners , they start out growinggiant pumpkinsfor merriment . But soon these innocentgardeners quicklysubmit to the raw power of the pumpkin vine .
In just 70 days , a championship Cucurbita pepo swells from the size of a marble to the size of a kitchen stove , and is about as shapely . But no pumpkin grower cares about facial expression . “ Pounds talk , everything else walks , ” bark Waterman . “ This ai n’t a damn stunner contest . ”
During July and August anAtlantic Giant pumpkincan derive 30 pound a day . There ’s nothing that grows faster than agiant pumpkin,”says Ron Nelson , a Washington state agriculturist . He should bang . His pumpkin vine was well over 900 Ezra Loomis Pound last year when it literally exploded just nine day before the outside weigh - off . “ It ’s shell only could n’t endure the accent , ” said Hugh Wiberg , a New England agriculturist . “ God never intended pumpkins to be pushed to such limit . ” Although Nelson pronounce he handled the tragedy well , other growers say he was bereft . “ He did n’t sleep for two night , ” state Wiberg .
These pumpkins create their own gravity , swan their own patch . presently the act of growing is no longer enough . “ I push and push , ” say Leonard Stellpflug , a New York state of matter cultivator . “ I go for broke . I either require the world championship or nothing . ” Stellpflug walks around with divining pole – coat hangers inside the shells of Bic pens – searching for “ water dome ” and “ energyfields . ” Wayne Hackney of Connecticut , after seek advice from photobiologists at a GTE testing research lab , installed 1,000 - wattlights in his patch and shinedthem all night , “ It see like Yankee Stadium , ” he said . He end after two years , but only because somebody stole them .
Holland in Washington state uses solar panel to lift the temperature of his irrigation water from 50 to 80 degree so hispumpkin plantswon’t experience shock .
Don Black , laminitis and curator of the pumpkin seed museum , ran his well dry this summer watering his pumpkins . So then he ran a hosepipe 300 foot from his brother ’s well . And he showered at his sister ’s house .
And Norm Craven ? He installed those infrared cameras and sensing element last year after his involvement in what many deal the most flagitious bit in the story ofpumpkin growing . He felt such hostility from other agriculturalist this year that he concentrated on cabbages instead .
Pumpkin masses yen to be the first to break 1,000 pounds , to get their names in the Guinness Book of Records , to strut on Regis and Kathy Lee . They are local celebrities , feature in newspapers and on television around the world . Their phones knell with calls from awestruck growers less evolved on the pumpkin chain . They work out relentlessly , and while they wo n’t pop their rivals to come after , some of them will bicker , whine , detest , lie and chicane .
They are as American as , well , pumpkin Proto-Indo European .
Tony Ciliberto had a limited flavor this leaping as he train his theater outside Wilkes Barre with 4,000 pounds of manure . “ My personal catgut look is someone will dispatch the 1,000 - pound mark this year , ” he predicted back on May 16 . And of course Tony hope he would be the one .
Tony , 41 , is a swelled man at 6 - foot-4 , 240 , a bricklayer , with manpower as large and leathery as catcher ’s mitts . Tony would love to develop pumpkins on a farm in Ontario , with smooth soil and asummer sunthat does n’t set until after 10 p.m. But he comes from this comer of Pennsylvania , and so does his wife . This is where his roots are found . And it is here , in Bear Creek , Pa. , on the side of arocky Pocono Mountainfoothill , that he has carve out his pumpkin patch . Perhaps no agriculturist in America has fill with more natural hard knocks , more bad luck , than Tony Ciliberto .
In those first years , his patch was so steep , pumpkins would snap off the vine overnight and roll down the Mountainside . Over the years , Tony has graded the holding with uncounted truckloads of soil and manure , and edge his patch with railway ties . He has turned this patch into the puffiest , richest , soft and most productive mountainside of dirt in Pennsylvania . His biggest pumpkin before this summertime was 734 pound sign , a commonwealth record , but nothing compared to what Tony knew he was capable of . Tony knew , always , the closed book of a big Cucurbita pepo was choose the ripe seed and praying for the veracious weather . What he wanted more than anything was sunlight . mean solar day after day of brilliant Dominicus . July and August are always getting cloudy up his way . A couple of long time ago , he chop down a dozen oaktrees to give his pumpkin plantsanother 30 mo of daytime . Give me sun , he would say every year . Give me sun .
All wintertime Tony considered which seeds to embed . This is the big decision any grower makes . He square off on a come from Mark Woodward ’s 511 - pestle , the mother of Herman Bax ’s 990 . He also chose a seed from Norm Craven ’s 836 , and germ from three Joel Holland pumpkins : the 827 , 722 and 792 . “ I ’m not much of a risk taker , ” Tony say . “ I ’m not try on anything new . No seeds from last class ’s pumpkin vine . I know enough agriculturist and I ’ve traded enough seed . I have the seeds that produced all of last year’sbig pumpkins . I ’m plant seeds that have already proven themselves . ”
On April 24 , to zip germination , he bring his wife ’s emery control board and gently filed the edges off his five select seeds , as if he were pass a pedicure to a Hollywood starlet . Pumpkin season had get . Tony put his cum in small pots withsoil that had been treatedwith fungicide and warm under lights in his lair . After three days , the seeds had germinated . Seedlings commence to emerge like claws from a crab . On May 7 , Tony transplant five precocious plant – each only four inches improbable , but full of hope – into his patch . straight off Tony cover each plant with homemade greenhouses the size of doghouse . Like an celebrity today , a jumbo autumn pumpkin is rarely left unprotected .
Over the next several weeks , Tony fertilized heavily with Miracle - Grow – he buys it in 12 - 1/2 pound box . He spray heavy doses of Ca nitrate , in the form of deodorized fish emulsion . “ It ’s really just fermented fish succus , ” he explain . “ It reek just awful , but they say it ’s good for theplants . ” He loved to pour on Garden’sAlive liquified kelp ( seaweed ) because “ it ’s debase with vestige elements – copper , zinc , magnesium , all thing a growing autumn pumpkin needs . ” He even fertilized with modest dose of Epsom salts , not for sore foot , but unaired : for afflictive bottoms . Later in the summer , a Cucurbita pepo can suffer soft spots where it rests on the ground , soft spots that can run to leaks and sure disqualification , if not death .
Tony was usually out watering before break of the day , and back again after body of work until dark . He waged constitutive and chemical warfare againstcucumber beetlesthat ate his leaf , squeeze vine borer that mangled his vine . By late June , Tony sprinkled Snarol — snail- and slug - grampus pellet — out in his dapple . And on affair , he has dropped a woodchuck with a rifle , when the vermin tunneled under the windbreak that surrounded his spell . We are talking gargantuan pumpkin . Ciliberto shoots to bolt down .
So what is a Cucurbita pepo , anyway ? A autumn pumpkin is not a cuke , and it ’s not a melon vine ( although the wordpumpkin comes from the Greek pepon meaning “ largemelon ” ) and it ’s not asummer squash , although it belong to the same botanic family . jumbo pumpkins , Cucurbita maxima , are in the same genus aswinter squashand gourd . gargantuan pumpkin and squashare essentially the same in size and shape . In fact , you may establish two seed from the same giant pumpkin , and one might give you a unripened behemoth , while the other yield you a pumpkin - coloured one . Cut them undefended , and they look indistinguishable on the interior . But do n’t think they are adequate . Oh , no , they are not .
The competitivepumpkin worlddiscriminates brutally on the fundament of colour .
A championship autumn pumpkin is often a warted , lumpy , kyphosis of a blob that is absolutely tasteless and useless . But it must be yellow or orange , although now “ cream”-colored pumpkins are satisfactory at weighoffs . A squash is light-green or gray . A pumpkin is what bend head and brings in the most prize money . After all , Linus does n’t advert out on Halloween dark wait for the Great Squash .
Which brings us to a 2d question . Why do people love pumpkin ? Pumpkin stories and traditional knowledge go back , it seems , to the beginning of time . Cinderella ’s posture came from a autumn pumpkin . Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater had a wife and could n’t keep her . Colonial Americans consumed so much Cucurbita pepo they made up a verse : We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkin at noon ; primed was not for pumpkins , we would be undoon . And Whittaker Chambers obliterate his microfilm of documents Alger Efiss gave to the communists inside his autumn pumpkin . pumpkin have been used in swither and soups and beer and Proto-Indo European , and on every doorstep in America this week sits a seaman - o’-lantern . Perhaps most staggering . , Alan Hirsch , a rebel scientist in Chicago , lately line up that no aroma sexually waken manpower more than a compounding of lavender andpumpkin pie . Hirsch attributes this to Freud and Oedipus , etc . Howard Dill – whose biography is entitle The Pumpkin King – has a simpler answer : “ There ’s always something about a elephantine Cucurbita pepo that had the powerfulness to make people happy . ”
In the summer of 1993 , Don Black grew and 884 - pound pumpkin , setting a world record . day before the Oct. 1 weigh - off , Don dilute his pumpkin vine into his pickup , and then he drove 22 minute unbent toNova Scotia , to be with Howard Dill .
Dill , a dairy farm Fannie Farmer in Windsor , Nova Scotia , began growing pumpkins in the previous 1950s and spend the better part of 20 years breed them for size . at long last , Dill created a novel assortment – Dill ’s Atlantic Giant . The U.S. Department of Agriculture grant Dillplant variety protection , similar to a patent of invention , and Dill pop out selling his ejaculate around the world . Dill won four consecutive humans backup , 1979 through 1982 , and his seeds or their descendants have been responsible for nearly every world champion in the last 20 years .
Black had promised himself that if he ever grew a competition , “ I would take it back to its cradle . ” He proceed his promise . “ When I pulled up his private road , ” Black recall , “ and Howard do out and saw my pumpkin vine , he put his bridge player on his heart : ` Oh my gosh . I never thought they could get that bountiful . ' ”
The determination to drive to Nova Scotia for Don Black was an worked up one . But it was also a political one . The pumpkin world was dunk into polite warfare , and Don Black had to opt sides .
The fact is , we live in an are of Giant Veggies , in which contests are held and prizes awarded for the largest carrot , sunflower and watermelon , not to cite the longest zucchini ( 104 inches ! ) . Ray Waterman , 45 , a Fannie Merritt Farmer and eatery proprietor in Collins , N.Y. , near Buffalo , was the visionary . It was he who first believe a oecumenical weigh- off – giant pumpkins , of course , would be the main issue . Waterman called Dill in 1982 after read about him and exhibit his grand idea . “ I envision an Olympics of Gardening , ” Waterman recalled . “ The average raiser was sick of produce the same sure-enough beans , radishes and cucumbers in his garden . People need a challenge . ”
But even from the source , peace did not hold in pumpkin land . Out on theWest Coast , a rival pumpkin governing body , the International Pumpkin Association , had taken origin . Terry Pimsleur , a publicist who represents apumpkin festivalnear San Francisco , was its leader . Pimsleur , Waterman and Dill initially talk about immix . They met at Waterman ’s eatery in 1983 and egos jar . Pimsleur said Waterman “ tried to keep me out of all the pictures . ” Waterman aver Pimsleur “ essay to take over . ” Neither had a kind word for the other – and still does n’t . “ Do n’t believe anything Waterman tells you , ” Pimsleur says .
And disenchantment with Waterman began to spread . By 1993 , coitus were so bad that four of the largest WPC weigh - offs – in Topsfield , Mass. ; Windsor , Nova Scotia ; Anamosa , Iowa ; and Nuttree , Calif. – abandoned Waterman and the WPC and create a third external autumn pumpkin organization , the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth . Dill and Wiberg led the revolt . “ Boxing has three unlike champions , ” said Wiberg . “ So do we . ”
Waterman , sitting in his restaurant recently , eat a slab of pumpkin Proto-Indo European , roll over the situation . “ I made it happen , ” he tell of the success of the pumpkin weigh - off . “ I made the damn happen . ” He accused other cultivator of jealousy , of fan out lies and gossip about him , of using their rival newssheet for “ yellow news media – or , in this case , Orange River . ”
“ They need to take the credibleness of the World Pumpkin Confederation and put it to their own use , ” he said , then vowed : “ I wo n’t countenance that happen . ”
In 1994 , however , the top 10 pumpkin in the world count off at GreatPumpkin Commonwealth site . Nothing fuel this exodus from the World Pumpkin Confederation more than what Ray Waterman did to Donald Black and his 884 - pound sign Cucurbita pepo in the tumble of 1993 .
On July 3 , Tony Ciliberto rise at 5 a.m. and commence his drip lines , hoses rounding his five giant pumpkin plants . This was a vital daytime . This morning he would pollinate his pumpkins . His plant were now full grown , vines as buddy-buddy as pipes , pass on large than potty seats . The plants were strong and immature and goodish and ready to begin the second half of the season , actually growing the autumn pumpkin .
Growers hand - pollinate for one elemental reason . They desire to mate a Michael Jackson with a Lisa Marie Presley , a male blossom from a Bax 990 with a female from a Dejong 945.5 . Such promising pollination wo n’t make this year ’s Cucurbita pepo any large , but the next generation of seeds could be Herculean . The individual best explanation for the dramatic climb in pumpkin size over the last few years is the superior seed . In 1984 , a 500 - pestle was still a dream . Now experienced growers consider a 500 - pounder a unsuccessful person .
Each pumpkinplant produces virile and female heyday . The distaff flower is fertile for only six hour . If the bee or the growers , do n’t come calling , that flower will produce no pumpkin . agriculturist like Ciliberto scrutinize their patches each night commence in late June , and on into former July , looking for female flowers that seem quick to unfold the next morning . Then they arrive before dawn , beforehand of the bees .
Ciliberto , on his hands and genu , pull back the giant parting of the Mark Woodward 511 flora , reached down and gingerly snapped off one male blossom , and then another , like Romeo picking flowers for Juliet . Like most champions grower , Tony never actually set foot in his patch . He stands or kneels on modest pieces of wood , the sizing of cafeteria trays , to avoid compact the dirt . To move about , he pick up the board behind him and places it in front of him . Tony steered a path out of the 51 1plant and over to the opened floweron the Joel Holland 827 .
He kneeled again , peeled off the petals of the male – the same room a romantic would play “ she loves me , she loves me not ” – and hold only a longsighted , unwavering stamen in his hired man . Little particles of pollen covered the stamen like a fine yellow dust . Ciliberto reached in and robustly paint the distaff pistil with the stamen , spreading the pollen all around . This was hardly a frail gesture . Ciliberto looked like a backyard barbecuer swob his chicken with sauce . He repeated the process with another stamen , just for good measure .
Ciliberto pollinated several efflorescence that morning . And he would again for several aurora to come , pollinating several femaleflowers on each plant . Then he would watch . Carefully . At the base of every female blossom is a little Cucurbita pepo , about the size of alemon drop . Once the heyday has been cross-pollinate , this pumpkin will grow . Swell . In the make out weeks , Tony Ciliberto would coldly , repeatedly , make life - and - death pick – choose just one pumpkin perplant to grow . The others get aborted with his pouch knife . Cut and heaved into thecompostpile . If he want to win , there ’s no other way .
In that fall of 1993 , Don Black weighed his fighter pumpkin on a tarpaulin . Most weigh - off site use a tarpaulin . It ’s a faster and safer agency to vacate pumpkins on and off the scales . After they librate the pumpkin , officials weigh the tarp . Don Black ’s pumpkin weighed 890 with the tarpaulin . The tarp weighed 6 pounds . A weight of 884 was verified by two government agricultural experts who served as judge , and a instance of the Toledo Scale Co. , present at the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth weigh - off in Nova Scotia .
Don Black had set the record . Or had he ?
Twelve hundred statute mile by , on the shoring of Lake Huron , in Port Elgin , Ontario , on that very same afternoon , Norm Craven ’s pumpkin was weighed and tape at 836 quid , the secondlargest pumpkinafter Don Black ’s . Port Elgin is a World Pumpkin Confederation site , under the auspices of Ray Waterman . Port Elgin ’s supporter offer their winner a new pickup motortruck , and Craven drive home a glad serviceman . A few sidereal day later , Craven would drive that new pickup to New York City and seem on Regis and Kathie Lee with his 836 - pound pumpkin .
This did n’t bother smuggled . Because he knew in the next edition of the Guinness Book of Records , to be published in September 1994 , he would be heel as theworld recordholder . His name would be there , Donald Black , in all 1.3 million copies . But when the book come out , Don Black could n’t trust his centre . He saw Norm Craven ’s name alternatively of his . There was no mention of Don
smuggled or his 884 - pounder . Nothing . Not a discussion . Ray Waterman was responsible for this . Don Black sound home and took every WPC memorial tablet he had ever win , flip them all into a metallic element barrel in his backyard , and burned them .
Waterman only refuse to recognize Black ’s pumpkin , and he had the ear of the Guinness citizenry . His reason was uncomplicated , and he defends it today . WPC rules state clearly that no pumpkin vine can be weighed with a tarp . Even though this is a common practice around the world , Waterman is rank . “ I ’m just out to protect the sport , ” he contends . He told the Guinness people to ignore Don Black . And they did .
Howard Dill hired a lawyer , who sent a shelling of varsity letter and sound papers to the Guinness folks in England . Anethum graveolens and his supporters argued that everyone use a tarp , that a tarp could n’t possibly press 48 pounds , the difference between Black ’s and Craven ’s pump IN . But the Guinness people held business firm . So then Dill and his people run after Norm Craven and his autumn pumpkin . Craven ’s pumpkin , they struggle , was weighed with a tarp , too . And worse . Much risky .
“ Norm Craven was in my shop the night before he was to provide for Port Elgin , ” retrieve Phil Lillie , a veteran pumpkin grower . “ He call to me it was rotten under the bottom . But he thought they might not inspect it . And he had the bow with silicone in it , because the root was all split . He was saying , ` Gosh , you know , it ’s going to be disqualified . But I ’ll take it . perchance they ’ll never remark . ’ The judges did n’t notice because it was so magnanimous . They were so overwhelmed by the size . ”
Harry Willemse , 41 , a Canadian and 13 - year veteran grower , was also at Port Elgin at the weigh - off . “ It ’s questionable whether Norm ’s pumpkin should have qualified for the weigh - off , ” he read . “ One of the rules is the pumpkin must be solid , and no soft spot . fundamentally , it was waste . You could just see the succus seeping out easy . Norm ’s , had a very wide split in it and it was seeping out . He must have plugged it up with something , for it to be oozing out like that . ”
Craven denies all of this . “ All made - up stories , ” he says . Craven lose many friend in the pumpkin world by remaining silent . Through his own inaction he give up Don Black to be abnegate . “ Nobody ’s glad for you , ” says Craven . “ Just the contrary . They ’re out to get you . ”
Meanwhile , the poor Guinness citizenry have found themselves in the middle of an awing fight .
Sarah Llewellyn - Jones , the deputy editor who handles vegetable record , was aggravate in a late telephony interview . “ We have more than 10,000 disk in the Guinness book , ” she tell . “ This has been the most troublesome one ever … . You have the trueness being subvert time and time again . None of them I can bank anymore . ”
Guinness is considering dropping Cucurbita pepo altogether .
ON SUNDAY , SEPT . 10 , TONY CILIBERTO BUILT A theater . Around his Cucurbita pepo . He drive in eight - foot stake around the plant life grown from the seed of Joel Holland ’s 722- muller – one flora occupying an region almost the size of a tennis court – and covered the wooden frame with Remay , a fiberglass that immobilize in oestrus , but earmark water and Light Within to pass through .
On this date , Tony ’s pumpkin was among the largest in the world – reckon at 903 pound . It rise gamey and powerful off the dry land , bubble , like the neck opening of a shit . The colour was a tender orange , tending toward cantaloupe .
Every Monday , Tony entered his plot with a tape recording measure and chronicle the emergence , begin with pollination on July 3 . On July 10 he wrote “ size of a baseball . ” July 17 : “ 50 inch in circumference , bigger than hoops . ” A week later it was 86 inches around and a week after that 114 .
On this Sunday morning , his pumpkin vine was 164 column inch around , or nigh 14 feet . It was 104 inches over the top one way 99 inch the other , for a total of 361 inches – rather auspicious , give that Herman Bax ’s 990 was 371 column inch . And Tony still had clock time on his side .
Tony calculated his pumpkin ’s weight by using Len Stellpflug ’s chart , a bible among pumpkin cultivator . Stellpflug , a turn in Kodak engineer , had plot these three measurements taken from scores of pumpkins over the years and used regression depth psychology to account a pumpkin vine ’s weight . The chart was n’t a warrant , but it was a skilful character reference compass point .
All summertime , Tony had dumbfound the sunshine he wanted . His leaves loved the sun , which drop photosynthesis into high gearing and prey his pumpkin vine well . But on the flipside , he recognise that too much direct sun on the autumn pumpkin itself could be fateful , and he kept the pumpkin garaged under plywood during July and August . “ The sun actually can cook them , ” said Tony . “ The temperature inside a pumpkin , it can get so high they really irrupt . ”
The summertime drought did n’t bother his plants , either . Tony just kept his wellwater flowing , tell his wife to hold off on the wash as much as possible . He rerouted his drainage pipes and sent body of water from the household shower and cesspit into his dapple . But summertime was now quickly turning to autumn . And now he needed to keep his Cucurbita pepo warm , to keep it growing 3 - 1/2 more week . The temperature in the mountains had duck to 32 the previous nighttime . His new nursery would keep his pumpkin warm , perhaps keep it growing . The weigh - off was Oct. 7 .
He had 26 days to gain 97 British pound sterling .
On Thursday , Oct. 5 , just two solar day before the international weigh - off , a dozen man assembled at Tony Ciliberto ’s house . Hurricane Opal arrived about the same fourth dimension . ordinarily , Tony would have exit his pumpkin on the vine one more Nox . But he had a cock-a-hoop decisiveness to make – where to take his Cucurbita pepo for weigh - off , a GPC site or a WPC site ? It all depended on the weight .
Waterman had announced he would make up $ 50,000 to any grower who came to a WPC land site with a 1,000 - pound pumpkin . Many raiser were skeptical . “ He ’ll never devote scoffed Don Black . Tony was be after to go to Ottawa , a GPC site , but the $ 50,000 was call him . He had to know .
So Tony and his pals , including his sidekick Dino , deign into the spell , now a penitentiary of mud . The patch Tony incline so cautiously was trampled by man , as Tony ripped vine out of the way so they would n’t trip . His married woman and small fry and parents and in - laws all stood in the rainfall and watched . Tony pull out his tongue and trim back the umbilical chord . The autumn pumpkin was loose .
The men fence the pumpkin . They needed to roll it on one side , and then the other , to slide the tarp beneath it . Tony pushed hard than anyone . “ Arrrgghhhhhh ! ” He recoil like a woman in childbirth .
The men hoisted the pumpkin and come in it softly on its throne : a shoe handle with straw breathe on a forklift .
Tony Ciliberto , who had n’t fume a butt in more than a yr , lit a Newport .
The forklift equipment driver placed the pumpkin cautiously on two erstwhile scales Tony had placed side- by - side on his driveway . The pelting discontinue and the sky clear up , if only for a moment . The bunch gathered around . Tony balanced one scale , while Dino equilibrise the other .
“ What are you at , Dino ? ” , Tony expect .
“ 397 , ” said Dino .
“ I ’m at 510 , ” say Tony .
A voice in the crowd yelled out , “ 907 ! ”
There was secretiveness . The skies were grey again . Rain was falling .
“ She ’s not even 900 pounds , ” Tony said with disbelief , “ We ’ve got to subtract for the shoe and the tarpaulin . She ’s about 847 . ”
“ Ca n’t be , ” said his wife .
“ No way , ” say his dad .
Tony just encircle his pumpkin . He was devastated , but his construction did not shit him .
He did not mourn the $ 50,000 he would never see – no , that money never seemed tangible anyway . Tony feel broken - hearted . Like a seductress , this pumpkin had romanced him , had result him on , only in the end to deceive him .
That Nox , he called Don Black .
“ She ’s a lightweight , Don , ” he said with merciless honesty . “ She just did n’t assess up . ”
TONY , JOAN AND THE KIDS towed the pumpkin to Ottawa , which might as well have been Cooperstown . Herman Bax and Barry Dejong were there . So were Don Black and Len Stellpflug and many other big growers in the pumpkin world .
The weigh - off was take for at Farmer Gus ’s pumpkin farm . All the old stager could severalise immediately that Paula Zehr ’s was the pumpkin to beat . Tony and Don jibe it out . Tony knocked on it with his clenched fist .
“ No thumping there at all , ” said Tony , “ hearty . ”
“ Oh , yeah , ” agreed Don . “ The meat is 10 inches thick , well-off . ”
Tony ’s pumpkin weigh formally at 845 . Paula Zehr ’s weigh in at 963 , the heavy in the world this class . Her autumn pumpkin had virtually the same dimensions as Tony ’s on the Stellpflug scale , but carried an extra 118 pounds .
Perhaps the departure was maternal . Twice each day , Zehr hug her pumpkin .
“ For about five minutes at a clip , ” she enjoin .
Obviously the Cucurbita pepo responded .
Tony acclaim for Paula , and walked over to congratulate her . But as she stood behind the scale with her superstar , posing for the networks , the tears rolling down her cheek , Tony ’s eyes seemed reeking , too , welling with letdown .
Tony Ciliberto is accustomed to setback . After all , he is a pumpkin raiser . He knew and his wife knew and every cultivator there knew this sadness would presently pass . The quest for the first 1,000 - pound pumpkin would extend .
“ We ’ll be back again , ” Tony read , gazing off into the center length , perhaps already thinking about next class ’s seeds . “ We ’ll be back again . ”
– By Michael Vitez
