Backyard Giants Read online

  They arrived before anyone else at the weigh-off. Dick spotted a few pumpkins lined up against the side of a building, and his heart beat faster. The pumpkins were about the same size as his. Maybe, he thought, he had a chance after all. But then he found out those were just for decoration. Soon, the real competitors began to arrive, true giants hauled in trailers or the backs of pickups that made Dick's entry look downright puny. Dick thought about leaving. But then his bolder nature took over. He'd traveled too far to just bail out like that. Why not at least find out what his pumpkin weighed? So he set his pumpkin in line for the scale. And when it was weighed, he slunk to the back of the crowd, pretending it was someone else's.

  Dick's turn for glory came later, when he stopped by the nursing home to show his pumpkin to his gram. Her excitement was all it took to make the trip worthwhile. She died not long after that, and Dick lost interest in big pumpkins for the next few years. Then one Christmas a coworker gave him a book called How-to Grotv World Class Giant Pumpkins, written by a Massachusetts man, Don Langevin. Dick showed the book to Ron, who shared his father's love of growing things. Ron was in his mid-20s then. He read the book cover to cover on Christmas Day, fascinated by the effort and strategy that went into growing the massive fruit. And he was intrigued by the challenge. Ron proposed a father-and-son growing contest. They'd each try growing a giant pumpkin in their backyard the next summer and take their biggest to a local weigh-off.

  That first year was 1994, and Ron grew a 250-pounder. Dick's best was 23 5 pounds. The next year, they pooled their efforts and borrowed a field from Ron's neighbor to dig a bigger garden. Father and son split the labor and expenses and ended the year with a 366-pound entry. They were hooked. Giant pumpkins began sucking them in a little more, year after year. They made friends at the weigh-offs, asked questions, and sought advice from the best growers. They learned about the importance of having the right seeds. But it wasn't easy. Many of the competitive growers in those days guarded their secrets—and their seeds—jealously. Ron and Dick had to search out the rare grower who was willing to share knowledge and experience with newcomers. Very quickly, father and son were introduced to the giant-sized frustrations of the hobby.

  The next few years brought trouble of a different kind to the Wallaces. Dick's health failed him, and occasional, unexplained seizures forced him to take an early retirement. Ron, looking for a bigger place with enough land for a nice pumpkin patch, bought a large new home in Greene, Rhode Island, south of Providence. Ron and his father worked together to renovate the in-law suite on the bottom floor of the sprawling split-level house, and in 2001, Dick and Cathy moved in.

  But the troubles kept piling up. Ron's brief marriage to a longtime girlfriend collapsed. Then his mother was severely injured in a car accident and had to quit work. Cathy Wallace already had been battling lupus for years, but now she began having more flare-ups, which affected her lungs and required trips to the hospital to battle a series of infections.

  The Wallaces soldiered on through the hard times. Dick threw his heart and soul into the pumpkin patch, spending hours studying seed genetics and growing techniques, fired up with the spirit of competition. Every new season brought the excitement of new possibilities. Now that he and Ron shared a home, the two men collaborated even more closely on each year's pumpkin crop.

  Dick and Ron Wallace, father and son, were the perfect partners. Both were sticklers for integrity. Both had soft hearts and an eagerness to help other people and do good in the world. But they also shared the same drive, a burning competitive instinct, and an obsession with excellence. For Ron, especially, growing giant pumpkins scratched an itch that had been bred into him since his childhood Little League days. From those earliest baseball games, he'd been a fierce competitor, rooted on by his equally competitive father, who was his mentor, adviser, trainer, and sometimes, his coach.

  While Dick had mellowed with age, Ron still burned. He favored his mother's dark looks and spoke with an impatient, machine-gun briskness. For Ron, there was no point in doing something if he couldn't give it everything he had. He'd been disillusioned over the years by a world where most people didn't make the same effort, so his temper was a little jagged at times, his patience frayed. It went against his nature to ask less or expect less of himself or of other people.

  Ron had acquired a love of cooking growing up in the Italian-American kitchens of his mother and grandmother, where sauces always seemed to be bubbling on the stove and family meals were a source of pride. He graduated from Johnson and Wales University in Providence with a degree in culinary arts and went to work in the kitchen of Quidnessett Country Club, an exclusive resort on the edge of Narragansett Bay. But even in his early 20s, Ron wanted more from life. "I always wanted to be wealthy enough that I didn't have to worry about money," he explained. His salary was under $20,000 in those days as a bottom-rung chef's assistant. So at the age of 24, Ron bought a book called Sonny Bloch's 171 Ways to Make Money in Real Estate. "Mr. Bloch ended up in jail for bilking some of his investors," Ron said. "But his book was very, very good."

  Inspired by the book's advice, Ron took his first big leap, paying $32,000 for a house at a Housing and Urban Development foreclosure auction. His friends told him he was nuts to risk his money. But Ron was determined to at least try. He invested a couple thousand to spruce up the property, then sold it for a $16,000 profit. He used the money to buy another property, and made another profit. Ron slowly built his real estate investment portfolio. He kept some properties for rental income, but mostly he bought, repaired, and sold quickly to pocket his profits. Ron had the nerve to take the risks, the discipline to stick to his investment rules ("I never flipped a property unless I could make fifteen thousand dollars"), and the drive to do the hard physical work of maintaining and renovating the properties. He progressed to buying condominiums and apartments around New England and in Florida. He made a lot of money. "But it didn't happen by accident," Ron said. "While everyone else was driving to the beach, I was driving to a house with a crew of guys, turning on the lights and sanding floors and papering walls every weekend."

  He still kept his job at the country club. "I'm a food-service person. I love what I do. And it's there for you every week," he said. Thanks to the same work ethic and drive that had made him successful in real estate, he quickly climbed the ladder from kitchen assistant to sous chef to executive chef, and finally, to general manager. The job meant overseeing the operations of the entire club, including the pool, golf course, and restaurant, and private bookings such as parties and weddings. Above all, he had to keep the club's wealthy members happy. That meant being on call 24/7. Even in the slower winter months it was rare for Ron to have a weekend off.

  Fitting giant pumpkins into that world was crazy, but Ron rationalized it in different ways. He and his father used to spend weekends fishing; now they spent them in the pumpkin patch—though pumpkins took up far more time than fishing ever did. Pulling weeds, pruning, fertilizing, spraying—it was a stress reliever. It was hard physical work that Ron could forget himself in. The rest of the world, other troubles, faded away in the garden. In the pumpkin patch, he had a clear-cut goal to work toward: a world record. It was simple and clean and challenging enough to keep him coming back year after year.

  Dick, in his graying years, preferred to focus on the fun and camaraderie of pumpkin growing. Over the seasons, he had forged strong friendships with other growers around the country, talking with them on the phone and exchanging e-mails and chatting online through BigPumpkins.com, the Internet home of their community. His willingness to help rookies learn the ropes had earned him the respect and admiration of pumpkin growers across the world, who knew him as the grandfatherly "Pap." Dick spiced things up with a boisterous and sometimes bawdy sense of humor. He indulged his class-clown instincts, finding unapologetic hilarity in the most juvenile pranks. On occasion, he shocked and appalled his fellow growers by dropping his extralarge trousers and mooning them when they le
ast expected it.

  But if anyone ever needed help, Dick was usually the first to offer it. And it fell to Ron to put the brakes on his father's sometimes too-generous instincts. Dick's eagerness to help meant the Wallaces could end up spending more time doing for others than they did for themselves. "Mr. Helper Friend," Ron called his dad when he was exasperated by one more promise the older man had made.

  Ron, though, was really just a younger, rawer version of his father. He was a little better at saying no, and he had a different way of indulging his inner wild child. As he hit 40, single again with plentiful income, he pushed the throttle down. He devoted 60 hours a week to his job. He drank hard and stayed out with friends late into the night. He dated frequently but avoided settling down.

  He had life where he wanted it. Yet success in the pumpkin patch had eluded him. As the years of failure had piled up, the disappointments had become harder to stomach. Ron's fixation on winning gained such a powerful grip on him that setbacks in the pumpkin patch would send him spiraling into a depression or stomping off in a rage.

  In that way, life did Ron a favor. There's nothing like seeing your parents through serious illness and having your marriage fall apart to remind you what's really important. It taught Ron to roll with the punches, to quit feeling sorry for himself and appreciate what he had. "Everybody in life takes a few sharp sticks in the eye. I live a very good life, and things have worked out for the better for me," he said.

  In the past few years, Ron had been able to get a better grip on his passion for winning. A few years ago, if he had lost his two biggest pumpkins just days before the weigh-off, as he had in 2005, "I'd have been in a coma for weeks," he said. Now, "I really love competing, but I don't live and die by it like I used to," he said. "Pumpkins have been put into perspective."

  After buying the new land, Ron and Dick hadn't been able to resist making their new patch bigger than the old 6,000-square-foot one. Where they'd had room for 8 plants before, now they had room for at least 10. And they planned on using every square inch for the coming year, even though it meant more work. Ron thought of it as his final big push. He had decided to go all-out in 2006, give it everything he had, and see what happened. Ten plants didn't seem like so much, actually. Last year he and his father had grown 8, and Ron had helped club member Johnny Nicholas grow 6 more. Johnny, 26 years old with a wife and a baby daughter, had been diagnosed with cancer, and after chemotherapy and radiation treatments, he didn't have much left over for pumpkins. So Ron had pitched in, helping Johnny with the pruning and fertilizing and chemicals. In the end, Johnny got an 1,100-pound pumpkin out of his patch. So in Ron's mind, 10 pumpkins amounted to 4 fewer than last year, not 2 more.

  Still, Ron's work was getting busier, and his dad was getting older. He realized he was going to have to cut himself some slack somewhere if he intended to grow 10 pumpkin plants. So he decided to give up growing his giant dahlias and let his flower beds fend for themselves. And after 2006, no matter what happened, he promised himself he'd cut back to just five plants and try to enjoy life more. Over the years, as the pumpkins consumed more and more of his time, he'd been neglecting the 1965 Pontiac GTO parked under a dustcover in his garage. It was his pride and joy, but there was rarely time to even take it for a spin. On many a broiling summer afternoon as he slaved in the pumpkin patch, sweat and dirt mixing into muddy trails down his brow, he'd think longingly, "I could be driving my GTO down the beach right now."

  So this would be his last big year. And here he was, starting from scratch. The main thing he needed to do was enrich his soil with organic supplements like manure and compost. And to do the job right, he needed the best manure he could get. Real world-class manure. And he'd found some just a few miles from his home, where a farmer had been piling up and tending to his cow manure for more than three years so that it was thoroughly and evenly decomposed. "This guy," Ron enthused, "is the number-one compost maker around." A lot of farmers just let their manure piles sit, he noted. "But this guy turns the piles, which keeps the microbial activity stirred up."

  Ron sent off some samples of the manure to a soil lab to be tested for disease and nutrient levels. It came back with a straight-A report card. It was cheap too—at eight dollars a cubic yard, it was a third of the cost of commercially produced composts. To a pumpkin grower, manure like that was gold.

  After the Rhode Island crew had cleared the land that first weekend, Ron had brought the excavator back to dig up some last remaining stumps and to level and grade the new garden area. Then the Wallaces' farmer neighbor, Donald Salisbury, came over with his tractor and gave the new patch its first plowing.

  The next weekend, on December 3, as Ron waited for his last load of cow manure, his friends and fellow growers had gathered again back at his house to begin spreading out the giant piles of manure across the garden. It was bitter cold, but no one complained. "Pumpkin growers are pretty tough workers," Ron observed. "It doesn't matter if it's raining or snowing, if you have stuff to do, you have stuff to do." Joe Jutras had brought over his small tractor to till in the manure. After another long day, the patch was as ready as the band of growers could make it.

  That evening, with snow clouds gathering overhead and a cold, damp wind whistling through the pine trees, Ron stood at the edge of his new pumpkin patch, marveling at their accomplishment. Time moved so quickly. The 2006 season was officially underway for the Wallaces. Thanks to their friends, they would be ready when spring came. The rest would be up to Dick and Ron.

  3

  Seeds

  AS JACK LEARNED in the tale of the beanstalk, a seed is never just a seed. It's a promise of something bigger, and it has the power to surprise. Giant-pumpkin seeds are impressive even before they've revealed what's inside them. Most are the size and shape of a large, flat almond, and they come in an array of earthy hues, from brown to gold to creamy white. But no grower cares what the seeds look like. What matters is the genetic programming locked inside the tough shell, which dictates what kind of pumpkin it will grow: how big, how orange, how round, how thick. Growers have been tinkering with those genetics for decades to create steadily bigger and heavier pumpkins. But all seeds are not created equal. Far from it. All have the potential to grow big pumpkins, but not necessarily prizewinning big pumpkins. The most hotly sought-after seeds are those engineered to grow the very biggest and very heaviest pumpkins, and which have proven their pedigree by already producing several world-class specimens.

  That was what had made the Bobier seeds famous. Seeds from two giant pumpkins grown by New York grower Bill Bobier were considered to be the most reliable producers of prizewinning pumpkins ever seen in the world of competitive pumpkin growing. In 1999, Mr. Bobier had found the magic when he grew a 723pound pumpkin by blending the genetics from two big and heavy pumpkins. The next year, he made the same genetic cross and grew an 84 5-pound pumpkin. Nearly every pumpkin that had set a record or won a weigh-off in recent years had one of those two Bobier seeds somewhere in its lineage.

  In the competitive pumpkin world, seeds have names so that genetic family trees can be traced through generations, like thoroughbred racehorses. Just as horses with championship lineage are believed to have better odds of becoming champions themselves, pumpkins grown from seeds with world-class genetics are thought to have a better chance of setting the next world record.

  Seeds are named by combining the weight of the pumpkin they come from with the name of the grower. All the seeds in a single pumpkin will carry the same name. So the seeds that came from Mr. Bobier's 723-pound pumpkin were known as 723 Bo-biers, and seeds from his 84 5-pound pumpkin were known as 845 Bobiers.

  Those two seeds quickly established a track record of growing big and heavy fruit. As more growers planted them, the list of champion pumpkins they produced grew longer, making the Bobier name legendary for supergenetics. The seeds were so renowned that, like "Michael" in basketball, or "Bruce" in rock 'n' roll, they no longer needed a last name. Growers spoke of the
m reverently as simply "the 723" and "the 845."

  As more growers caught on to the hobby, more giant pumpkins were being grown each year with bragging rights to 1,000-pound genetics. Each pumpkin can contain several hundred seeds, and the seeds remain fertile for many years. That was making good seeds not only abundant, but also easily obtainable and often free for the asking. Planting another grower's seed is a kind of compliment, and most growers are eager to share and trade their seeds to encourage the hobby. Protocol requires only that seed requests be mailed with a self-addressed, stamped bubble envelope for easy return.

  In the competitive giant-pumpkin world, having your name attached to a prized seed stock is almost as prestigious as growing a record-setting pumpkin—and it requires shrewd gamesmanship. A seed can build a reputation only if it produces big pumpkins. And it can do that only if it's planted by skilled growers. Most serious competitors grow 4 to 10 plants a year, and they want every plant to have world-record potential. That leaves little room to gamble on unproven new seeds. Convincing a top grower to dedicate a precious spot in his or her garden to a dark horse requires a brazen lobbying campaign and more than a little bit of shameless hype.

  As 2006 rolled around, Bobier's wave of fame was cresting. After six seasons of planting, there were very few of the legendary 723 and 845 seeds left. While that increased their mystique, at a more practical level, it also meant that there weren't going to be many grown anymore. The seeds had accomplished just about all they were going to—which was quite a lot. By 2005, the 723 Bobier was indisputably the number-one seed for producing big, heavy pumpkins. Based on stats collected by one grower in an Internet database, the five heaviest pumpkins grown with the 723 seed were heavier than the top five grown by any other seed, averaging 1,208.5 pounds. The 723 Bobier also owned the franchise on producing pumpkins over 1,000 pounds. The 845 wasn't far behind, ranking as the fifth-best-producing seed of all time. And the seeds holding second, third, and fourth place were all offspring of one of the Bobier seeds.