Backyard Giants Page 23

  Sitting in the crawling line, Ron craned his neck to see how many trucks were ahead of him. He'd made this trip so many times over the years, sat in the same line, engine idling and hopes percolating. But always he had left disappointed. Three times he'd made it into the top 10. He'd thought he had a winner in 2000, only to settle for second place after Steve Connolly rolled in with a bigger pumpkin. Ron hoped today would be different, but in the back of his mind he was remembering how he'd hoped that before. There were a lot of top growers in New England, any one of them capable of showing up with a world-record contender that day.

  If someone outside of Rhode Island was going to set a New England record, this was the most likely place for it to happen. There wasn't another weigh-off in the nation, much less New England, that boasted the kind of pedigree attached to Topsfield, an old-fashioned county agricultural fair attended by tens of thousands of people each fall. The event originated in the woodlands north of Boston in 1820, when farmers began gathering each year during the first week in October to exchange information about raising cattle and swine and growing crops such as potatoes and corn.

  Giant pumpkins were latecomers to Topsfield. The fair held its first weigh-off in 1984 with 16 growers from Massachusetts and Connecticut. The winner that year weighed 433 pounds. By 2005, Jim Beauchemin led a field of more than 80 entries with his 1,315pounder. Two things propelled the Topsfield pumpkin weigh-off to the top of the heap: money and the promise of celebrity. The prizes were among the best offered anywhere: $3,500 for the heaviest pumpkin, $1,000 for second place, and $750 for third. But the main allure of winning Topsfield was status. The weigh-off is held on the morning of the fair's opening day, and the winning grower enjoys minor celebrity as the focus of newspaper, radio, and television stories, pushed by the fair's public-relations muscle. The winning pumpkin becomes a star attraction of the fair, displayed in a climate-controlled glass case in the center of the huge Fruit and Vegetable Barn, where visitors ogle other prizewinning fruits and vegetables, decorative gourds, vegetable-themed scarecrows, and painted jack-o'-lanterns. A sign painted above the building entrance exhorts visitors to "Come In 6c See New England's Largest Pumpkin"—even though that wasn't necessarily true anymore.

  A slow-burning rivalry had emerged in recent years between the Rhode Island growers, now operating under the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers banner, and the larger New England Pumpkin Growers Association, which held the Topsfield weigh-off. The ascendancy of the Rhode Island weigh-off, which claimed the bragging rights to New England's biggest pumpkin in 2005 with Scott Palmer's bright-orange 1,44 3-pound fruit, had taken a little of the shine off the Topsfield weigh-off. But only a little. Reigning Topsfield champion Jim Beauchemin said it loud and often: Topsfield was "New England's premieeeeeeer weigh-off site."

  The 2006 season had been a rough one for all New England growers. So many of them had lost pumpkins that only 4 5 had registered entries—half the number expected. Only the hardiest pumpkins and luckiest growers had made it to weigh-off time. And here were the Wallaces, among the survivors, bringing not just one pumpkin, but two. That alone was gratifying to the father and son. Whether they came home with a prize or not, these were still the biggest pumpkins they'd ever managed to get to a weigh-off.

  About 7 A.M., it was finally Ron's turn to pull his truck inside the cavernous metal-paneled building, where already the day was kicking into high gear. Weigh-off volunteers and fair workers bustled across the arena, kicking up the deep, orange sand that covered the floor as they directed the pumpkin unloading with the urgent efficiency of traffic cops at a busy intersection. Aluminum bleachers on opposite sides of the rectangular arena were designated for spectators. In front of one set of bleachers, weigh-off officials had drawn two rows of white chalk lines in the sand, marking off neat squares where the pumpkins would be parked to await their turn at the scale. Forklifts crisscrossed the arena, spearing the wood pallets beneath the pumpkins in the pickups, then roaring away with the monster fruit suspended high in the air—a harrowing sight for the growers. The growling engines and incessant warning beeps from the forklifts drowned out most conversation as the growers went about seeing their pumpkins safely to the floor of the arena.

  Weigh-off coordinator Jim Kuhn, a veteran grower from New Hampshire, eyed each entry as it came in and directed the pumpkin to a spot on the floor based on how heavy he judged it to be. The heavier it looked, the closer it went to the front of the line near the stage and scale. The smallest pumpkins would be weighed first, and the biggest saved for last. Kuhn waved pumpkins he judged to be under 1,000 pounds—the noncontenders—to an area on the other side of the arena. Competitive growers cringed a little when their pumpkins landed in what they called the "kiddie patch," though most everyone had been there at one time or another. Kuhn took one look at Ron's pumpkin and directed it to the front of the arena—the very first spot.

  As their pumpkins were unloaded, the growers were freed to roam about, gossip with each other, and assess the competition. Lined up in a double row in the sand, the massive fruits looked like alien pods in the cargo bay of a spaceship. Most were pale orange, though they ranged from nearly white to the bright reddish-orange of Dick's pumpkin. Most of the shapes were not what anyone would readily describe as pumpkinlike. Joe Jutras had brought a long, flat fruit that looked more like a giant, orange jalapeno pepper. Some pumpkins were broad and low, some high and round. Most were covered with the rough brown cantaloupe veins that competitive growers loved.

  The growers prowled around the biggest pumpkins, like dogs sniffing an adversary. They were generous with praise, and gracious with mutual respect, but occasionally, fangs were exposed. "Look at that one," Dick said of an especially huge, round pumpkin riding high and proud on its wooden pallet, attracting many admiring looks. "It's a balloon," he whispered. "Stick it with a pin and it'd probably blow up."

  A bright sun was quickly warming the day outside, but growers and spectators still huddled in sweaters and jackets inside the unheated arena, a place usually reserved for horse shows and livestock auctions. Ron paced nervously, occasionally stopping to talk with rivals, but mainly sticking with the Rhode Island crew, huddling now and then to consult with Joe Jutras or Steve Sperry in a hushed voice while taking sidelong glances at the rows of competing pumpkins.

  "Hey, buddy, nice to see you," Dick called to New Hampshire grower Bruce Whittier, a trim, handsome man in his 50s who had walked up to admire Dick's orange entry. "I didn't bring a big one, but I brought a pretty one," Dick said. He was hoping he'd have a shot at winning the fair's prettiest pumpkin award. "Ah, well, you never know," Dick said, his gaze wandering over to the kiddie patch, where he'd spotted another bright-orange pumpkin with an appealing apple shape. "That's a pretty one over there too."

  "Well, mine ain't pretty," Whittier said, pointing to a tire-shaped pumpkin that looked as if it had just rolled off a giant dump truck and crashed against the curb. It leaned crazily on top of its pallet, one side high in the air, stem angling downward, blossom end up.

  "That's yours? What are you talking about?" said Dick, trying to be polite.

  "I don't have a clue what it weighs yet," Whittier said. "You know . . . how do you tape that?" he asked, his voice rising in puzzlement. "I taped it at eight-something."

  Dick lifted an eyebrow. The pumpkin looked a lot bigger than 800 pounds. As these giants matured, growing lumpy and crooked on the vine, getting an accurate measurement could be a challenge. But Whittier, a veteran who knew his way around a pumpkin as well as anybody, had a bumbling-professor-like penchant for acting a little extra perplexed. He had looked just as mystified that summer when visitors to his patch, one of the stops on the New Hampshire tour, asked him how much his pumpkins were taping. He claimed to have no idea. But he hadn't objected, and in fact seemed tickled when several of the growers pulled out a measuring tape and made their own calculations on the spot. The same thing happened now. As Whittier discussed with Dick the proper way
to estimate the wheel-shaped pumpkin's weight, another grower pulled a measuring tape out of his pocket and set to work.

  "I taped it from stem to blossom," Whittier explained.

  "Well, that would make it a lot smaller then," Dick said. "The right way to tape these is this way," he said, running a finger around the edge of the largest part of the pumpkin.

  "Right around the whole bottom?" Whittier said skeptically.

  "Absolutely. You've got to tape it like the ass end was up in the air. That's the way we always taped ours."

  "You know," said Whittier, much amused by watching his rivals take their own measurements of his pumpkin, "they say the more you tape it, the bigger it gets."

  Indeed. When Whittier's pumpkin was measured Dick's way, it tallied 378 inches, or 1,130 pounds.

  Ron's pumpkin was the star attraction. This one was the Wallace's 1068 that they had crossed with the 1370 Rose. It was shaped something like an avocado—with a high, rounded top sloping down to a long, thick snout at one end—punctuated by a stem as thick and gnarled as the trunk of a small tree. The pumpkin blushed orange at the top, but faded to a mottled cream color with salmon undertones along the sides. The longer you looked at it, the bigger it looked. Based on its measurements, it was supposed to weigh right at 1,300 pounds.

  But there were other contenders, nearly as big, that would make this weigh-off a real contest. Jim Ford's big one was parked right next to Ron's. Mark Breznick from Vermont had a beautiful, high, round pumpkin that might hold a surprise. That was enough to put the Wallaces on edge. Then, after the other entries already had been settled into their places, a dump truck rolled into the arena with a gargantuan, plastic-wrapped blob filling its bed. Ron spotted it immediately, jolting to attention. "That looks like a big pumpkin," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Who is that? I think I'll take a look." He walked briskly across the arena, dodging beeping forklifts, to get a better view of the gigantic fruit that had been mummified in shiny plastic wrap. Some growers wrapped their pumpkins after cutting them from the vine to keep then from losing weight through evaporation.

  Ron stopped several yards away from the truck. He didn't want to get too close, or make it too obvious that he was scoping it out, but his eyes were glued to the new challenger. He could tell it was big. How big, though? Another grower walked by. Ron acted nonchalant. "That's a nice pumpkin in the dump truck," he said to the grower, who walked on by without responding.

  Ron steadied his nerves, calmed his face, and tried to shrug off his worry. The pumpkin's owner, Joe Goetze, from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, jumped up into the bed of the truck and quickly stripped away the plastic wrap. The forklift speared the pallet, backed up, turned, and began rumbling across the arena. The forklift driver stopped briefly to consult with Jim Kuhn, who had been looking the pumpkin over as it rolled across the sandy floor. Kuhn pointed to the front row, right next to Ron's pumpkin. Ron walked over to Joe Jutras and leaned in to speak quietly.

  "I don't know, Joe. It's going to be close," he said.

  "I know," said Joe. "It's going to be close."

  Dick was concerned, but he was determined to stay upbeat. "It's hard to tell," he said, looking over the Goetze entry. The cream-colored pumpkin was low and wide and looked like solid rock. "That's a nice pumpkin. If Ronnie wins it, it probably won't be by more than twenty pounds. But you know, when you get here, they all look just as big as yours."

  Ron had on his game face. "Would I like to win? Sure I would. But you can only have one person win these things. You can make the top ten at this weigh-off and you've done your job. It's very difficult, you know. It's very difficult..." The beeping of a passing forklift punctuated his words. The bleachers now were filled with spectators. Jim Beauchemin climbed onto the 18-inch-high wood platform that was to serve as the announcer's podium, grabbed the microphone, and asked the crowd to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner." The weigh-off had begun.

  The pumpkins were weighed on two industrial scales installed on either side of the podium. The scales were four-foot-by-four-foot metal plates set on the ground and wired to a digital display mounted high on the wall of the arena behind the scales. Several volunteers designated as "pumpkin lifters" carried the smaller entries to the scales on a tarp. The larger ones were carried over on pallets by a forklift. Beauchemin called out the name of each entry's grower, filled in the waiting time with microphone chit-chat, and then announced the official weight for each pumpkin. Ron paced the arena alone, sometimes staring down at his feet as he walked, sometimes snapping open his cell phone to make a call. "He knows there's a couple here that could beat him," Dick said, watching his son pace.

  The weigh-off sped along, starting with the kiddie patch pumpkins that climbed steadily from 343 pounds into the 400s and 500s and on up into the 800s. Steve Sperry, who had won at Tops-field in 2004, was the first of the Rhode Island crew to have a pumpkin weighed: 891 pounds. Then, Steve Connolly weighed 923.5 pounds. "Are we going to see the first thousand-pounder of the day?" Beauchemin had teased the crowd when Peter Ron­deau's entry was brought to the scale. Peter had been taping it at about 950 and was hoping it would go heavy. But as the weight blinked onto the screen, Beauchemin broke the bad news; "No! Nine hundred and fifty pounds!"

  As more pumpkins were weighed, more disappointments piled up. Everything seemed to be weighing in lighter than expected, and it was taking an embarrassingly long time to get to the half-ton mark. Topsfield was beginning to look like the junior league. Only 15 pumpkins remained to be weighed. "Okay," Beauchemin said, reassuring the crowd. "We haven't seen a thousand pounds yet, but we will."

  It was Joe Jutras who finally broke the barrier. His jalepefio-shaped pumpkin was 10th to the last to be weighed, starting the top-10 countdown with the first 1,000-pounder of the contest. But even his pumpkin was unexpectedly light, weighing 1,054 pounds when it was estimated to be 1,100. Dick's bright-orange pumpkin was the first to go heavy, weighing 1,110 pounds, nearly 8 percent more than expected.

  Jim Ford, one of Ron's main challengers and third to last to go to the scale, weighed in a pumpkin at just 1,062 pounds. With only Ron and Goetze left, Dick still had the heaviest pumpkin of the day. Already, he was assured of third place, along with prize money and a ribbon. He'd never expected that. "Third is the highest I've ever done," Dick marveled. "Almost got a tear outta me," he wisecracked. "But nawwwwwt quite."

  As the forklift maneuvered Goetze's pumpkin into place, Dick walked over to the grower, a small, wiry middle-aged man with a bushy gray mustache, and shook his hand with a grin. "May the best man win," Dick told him.

  "Do we have a leader?" Beauchemin shouted into his microphone as the weight blinked on the display. "Do we have a leader? One thousand . . . two hundred . . . eighty-three pounds!"

  At 1,283 pounds, Goetze was in first place, but his pumpkin hadn't weighed as heavy as it looked. And now it was Ron's turn. As the forklift rumbled across the sand with his pumpkin held high, the last of the day to be weighed, Ron stepped into a clearing in the middle of the arena. He stood with his hands buried in the front pockets of his jeans, his body tense, his eyes fixed on the digital display at the top of the wall. Dick stood next to him, his arms folded across his chest, eyes on the display too.

  "Ron Wallace is from Rhode Island . . . " Beauchemin told the crowd. "This is one big pumpkin, folks. One big pumpkin!"

  Ron's fruit settled to the scale. "Allllllrighty . . . " Beauchemin said. "The leader is one thousand two hundred and eighty-three pounds. Are we going to get a new record for Topsfield? Are you witnessing the biggest?" The forklift backed away. The scale jumped from zero and zoomed through the hundreds. "Alllllright . . . one thousand . . ."

  The red digital numbers clicked rapidly higher, then stopped. "One thousand . . . three hundred and eighty-seven pounds!" shouted Beauchemin. "Thirteen hundred eight-seven pounds! The heaviest pumpkin ever to be weighed at Topsfield Fair!"

  The crowd roared its approval. So did Ron. He cocked his arm, leaned
back, and pumped his fist in the air. "WooooHaaaaaa!" he hollered. Then his dad grabbed him in a bear hug. Then Joe and Peter and Steve Sperry, grins splitting their faces ear to ear, pulled him away and lifted him high on their shoulders. Ron again shook his fist in the air. The applause and shouts of congratulations thundered in his ears. Dick stepped back, his eyes red and brimming, watching his son get something they'd both wanted for a long, long time.

  The initial frenzy over, Ron and Dick mingled in the crowd of growers, accepting congratulations.

  "I didn't know father and son were going to take first and third," said old-timer Jim Kuhn in his woodsy New Hampshire drawl.

  "I didn't either, to tell you the truth," said Dick, looking a little dazed. He'd not only won third, but also he was taking home the prettiest-pumpkin award, just like he'd hoped. "You had a lot of pumpkins that didn't weigh what I thought they would weigh," Dick said.

  "Yup. They all went light," agreed Kuhn. "That one pumpkin shocked me."

  "Where's the treasurer?" Dick said, glancing around. "I want to get paid now."

  "Your check'll be in the mail," Kuhn grinned.

  "You start doubting yourself," Ron was telling Whittier. He'd been mobbed by well-wishers and was about to be whisked off by Topsfield Fair officials to take care of some paperwork and public relations duties. His victory was just beginning to sink in. "I've always questioned myself," he told Whittier, who had walked over to add his own congratulations. "Are people going to think I don't know what I'm talking about? I'm always preaching and researching and everything, and are people saying, 'Gee, if you know so much, how come you haven't grown the biggest pumpkin?' You get sick of hearing stupid stuff. You start doubting your own abilities."