Otus is indisposed this week so here is his column from Aug. 18, 2007 -- a column that still gets buzz in Hope.
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Dear Otus,
Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.
Being something of a connoisseur of the succulent citrullus lanatus, I always try to keep tabs on the Hope Watermelon Festival to note how big the annual winner is.
I didn't find an article on who won the biggest watermelon contest. Can you fill me in?
-- Sandia Agrande,
Mountain View
Dear Sandia,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and a double pleasure to have the opportunity to report the latest on the controversy.
Oh, yes. There is controversy. Controversy that could shake the multibillion dollar industry to its very vines.
The Hope Watermelon Festival hasn't seen this much excitement since Aug. 23, 1980, when then-Gov. Bill Clinton lost the watermelon-eating contest to then- U.S. Rep. Beryl Anthony, but stormed back to humiliate him in the seed-spitting and cowchip tossing contests.
Clinton went on to become president and Anthony, his spirit broken, eventually lost his seat to Jay Dickey, which is an embarrassing blot on anyone's career.
Don't be fooled by the generally festive atmosphere in Hope during the annual festival. Growing watermelons is big business and the bigger the melon, the bigger the bucks.
Who can forget the steroid controversy of '98? That's when one Jake Anderson of McCaskill was heralded as the new champion, having finally knocked off longtime watermelon king Floyd Hemmings.
Anderson's melon, a Melitopolski/Orangeglo hybrid, tipped the scale at 265.1 pounds, shattering Hemmings' record at the time by 2.1 pounds.
Then, after officials detected what they termed "unnatural baldness, periods of rage and rind acne," the melon was tested and turned out positive for anabolic steroids.
Anderson was banned from the watermelon festival for life.
What's the payoff for growing the biggest watermelon? Sure, there are bragging rights and the famed Marcus Squires Trophy, but there are also fortunes involved.
Each year the winning melon is put out to stud, so to speak. Its seeds are harvested, hermetically sealed, and sold to the highest bidder.
For many years the seeds were bought by the Siegers Seed Co. of Holland, Mich. Through 2004, the top price Siegers paid for a winning melon was $2,750.
Then a frenzied bidding war got underway in 2005 when the Hemmings family produced two record-breakers from a single field. A 262.6-pound melon was registered on Aug. 29 that year and was followed on Sept. 3 by a monster melon weighing 268.8 pounds.
For that last effort Hemmings was awarded a Guinness World Records certificate.
The framed honor is on display at The Magical Melon Restaurant just up the street from the Clinton birthplace.
Once the record had topped the magical 268 figure, Siegers suddenly had competition from the Harris Moran Seed Co. and hybrid specialists the D. Palmer Seed Co.
Before the dust settled, the Hemmings family had pocketed $476,000 for the two melons. Individual seeds from the record-setters are expected to sell for $3,500 each.
That set off a record-growing frenzy that culminated in this year's unprecedented melon turned in by David Colcase.
He claimed he achieved the beast by feeding it a special fertilizer of blood meal, manure, compost, high phosphorous and potassium tablets and lengthening its growing day with the use of a metal halide grow light that produced 129 lumens per watt.
Concerned festival officials claim Colcase is guilty of "juice doping." They say he infused his melon with homologous pulp that enabled it to top the scales at an astonishing 284 pounds -- an unheard of increase in the world record.
It'll be difficult to prove because Colcase's melon has a rind with the tensile strength of fiberglass and he has turned it into a propane tank. His record may go into the books, but it will probably have an asterisk as officially protested.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you the heaviest cat in Guinness World Records weighed 46.8 pounds.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of
Z humorous fabrication X
appears every Saturday. Email:
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