How to Make Pumpkins Fly

(Nov. 14) -- Start with one delightfully warped science project contest for grown-ups. Add a touch of county fair and a whole lot of tailgating. What do you get? Flying pumpkins.

Every year on the first weekend after Halloween, competitors bring catapults, trebuchets, air cannons and all sorts of other pumpkin-launching contraptions to a vast cornfield near Bridgeville, Del. The World Championship Punkin Chunkin draws fans from all over the country to rural Sussex County, where a pumpkin is a "punkin" and "chunkin" rolls off the tongue so much easier than "chucking" after "punkin."

If you chunk it, they will come. Tens of thousands do. They crowd the fences along the mile-long firing line to see who can throw a pumpkin the farthest.

They hope for moments like the one on the afternoon of Nov. 7, when Yankee Siege -- a massive medieval war machine called a trebuchet -- did what's never been done before.

A steam whistle shrieked. "Fire in the hole!," the safety boss shouted. The machine's huge counterweight dropped, pulling up a long arm that whipped a sling high into the air and flung a pumpkin -- which splatted in the field 2,036 feet away.

Another world record.

"We just threw a pumpkin from a trebuchet in competition over 2,000 feet, which has never happened in the history of the world as far as we know," a gleeful Steve Seigars explained. Seigars and his team built Yankee Siege in Greenfield, N.H., at the nursery and farm stand he runs when he's not chasing championships. He's come to "The Chunk" for the last six years and won the trebuchet division every time.


'It's a Redneck Thang. You Wouldn't Understood'

The people who live in what they call Slower Lower Delaware know their machines -- from the rugged little ATVs that are everywhere at the Punkin Chunkin to the enormous farm machines that work the fields of Sussex County. So the genesis of this oddball contest shouldn't seem so, well ... odd.

"We all like to design, cut, weld, bend steel and metal," observed Rick Garloff, team captain for the compressed-air cannon Chunk'n-ology. "And what better way to do it that to shoot pumpkins?"

"There are as many legends about how it started as there are machines on the field this week," said World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association (WCPCA) spokesman Frank Shade with a grin. "The closest to the truth I know is ... four guys were sitting around a blacksmith shop in Lewes, Del., and they were discussing medieval games."

The conversation turned from tossing anvils, which were deemed too hard on the back, to propelling pumpkins. One of the men had heard that students at a nearby college were throwing pumpkins to raise scholarship money.

"Being good Sussex Countians, they decided they could build machines to do that," Shade said.

Three teams showed up at Bill Thompson's field near Georgetown for the inaugural Punkin Chunkin in 1986. About 80 people were on hand to witness the winning throw of 126 feet.

John Penuel missed the first event but has been there every year since. "Build yourself a catapult and come out and play with us," he remembers his friend Thompson telling him. And so he did. Penuel "got all of 47 feet" his first time out.

This year, Penuel came with two school bus-mounted air cannons that were among 109 machines in the competition. The barrels of some of the big guns are longer than the first world record throw. The current WCPCA record is 4,483 feet, set by the cannon Young Glory III last year.

Attendance multiplied along with the distances over the years and organizers had to find larger and larger fields. This year, about 70,000 people came to the Wheatley Farm over three days. The event raised $60,000 to $80,000 annually for charities and college scholarships "before the economy crashed," according to Shade. Even in these hard times, the association keeps up its commitment of $20,000 for worthy students with tens of thousands still left for local charities, St. Jude Children's Hospital and Childhelp, a child abuse prevention organization.

Because it's the biggest thing that ever happens around Bridgeville, "The Chunk" is its own mini-economic stimulus package.

"Look at all the money we're bringing in now. All the restaurants and hotels are filled," beamed Mary Phillips, a 20-year Punkin Chunkin veteran who's now part of the all-female Chunking for the Cure crew. Their eye-catching pink-and-purple cannon with an air tank featuring a painting of Betty Boop holding a pair of strategically placed pumpkins makes appearances to raise money to fight breast cancer.

But surely there are other ways of attracting a crowd to support good causes. What makes people devote so much time and energy to heaving pumpkins?

"It's a redneck thang. You wouldn't understood. That's how my dad would say it," laughed Garloff, a member of the elite club with throws beyond 4,000 feet.

Shade, who was WCPCA president for eight years, thinks humans have an innate need to throw things. Just look at what any baby in a high chair does with food.

"Well, as adults there are only a few things we can throw," Shade explained. "Not everybody can shot-put or throw baseballs or whatever. We can make things fly. And that's the excitement -- seeing something go."

Weird Science and Pie in the Face

Don't be fooled by the party atmosphere. There's live music and industrial-strength tailgating with coolers and grills as far as the eye can see at the Punkin Chunkin. But there's serious science all around.

Physics classes from area schools take annual field trips to learn how the machines work. "They're not here just to party, they want to see how it's done," said Shade.

Ryan Messick knows how it's done. Throwing pumpkins must be in his genes. His aunt leads the original all-women's team Bad Hair Day and his dad is on the crew of Bad to the Bone, a record-setting centrifugal machine. Messick said he's been coming to The Chunk "forever" and has helped out with both teams. This year, he came home from college for the event and brought along some buddies from engineering class.

"They'd never been here before," Messick said. "They were just saying ... how much actual science is in it."

There's so much science that the Science Channel will air a one-hour special about the Punkin Chunkin Thanksgiving night.

Chunkers compete in 12 divisions -- from youth classes and theatricals, which are like life-size Mousetrap games or Rube Goldberg machines, to the mighty air cannons, which blast out 8- to 10-pound pumpkins at speeds up to 700 feet per second. They go so fast it's nearly impossible to see them, so chase crews zip around downrange on ATVs to track each shot, which is measured with GPS surveying gear. Everybody gets one shot per day that counts. The longest single shot in each class during the three-day event wins.

Making your pumpkin fly farther than your competitors' isn't as simple a just putting more force behind it. Trajectory and weather conditions are crucial. And the pumpkin must remain intact until it smashes into the ground. Hitting a pumpkin with too much pressure too quickly will make it explode coming out of a machine. That's called "pie."

On the first day of this year's Chunk, one team shooting into a strong headwind had their pumpkin break up and blow back all over them. They literally got pie in the face.

Chunkers use varieties of pumpkins that are white or light green and have thicker shells than the familiar orange ones, so they're less likely to become pie. But they're still big, round pieces of fruit, not cannonballs. So they can be unpredictable.

"No pumpkin is the same," Penuel explained. When they fly out of a machine, "some of them corkscrew, some of them take off up, some knuckleball -- because they're not consistent."

"We wait 363 days to come out here and shoot pumpkins for three days. So we want to make sure we come out here with the best pumpkins and the best machine," said Garloff.

Donny Jefferson, a mechanic and farmer from nearby Milton, has the best machine in its class. Bad to the Bone is a truck-mounted centrifugal device that spins like a carnival midway ride gone berserk. It set the record of 2,737 feet in 2006 and won this year with a throw of 2,522.

"It's not a crap shoot," said Jefferson. "It's all in numbers and you can figure it out mathematically and make it happen."

The One-Mile Barrier

"52-80. That's what I want," said three-time air cannon champ Joe Thomas, who's known to all as "Wolfman" and is instantly recognizable with his long white beard and ever-present chrome helmet.

Wolfman spoke for all his fellow chunkers who dream of being the first to make a pumpkin fly a mile -- 5,280 feet.

On the weekend before this year's Chunk, the Big 10 Inch team traveled to Moab, Utah -- where the air is thinner than in Delaware -- and claimed a Guinness record with a shot of 4,623 feet. But the WCPCA doesn't recognize distances set at other events. The best the big cannon could do at this year's Punkin Chunkin was 4,162 feet, which was still good enough to beat everyone else.

"Realistically, anyone could break a mile," Shade said. "Go to the mountaintop and throw downhill." For it to count as a World Championship Punkin Chunkin record, it has to happen at the annual competition in flat, near-sea-level Delaware.

"That mile has been elusive for a long time," veteran chunker Penuel mused. "The guy that gets the mile is going to have to have a combination of a good machine, good tailwind, good pumpkin and a lot of luck."

Surrounded by friends and family in the crew area, Bad Hair Day team captain Michelle Harris played down the quest for one mile.

"I don't even think it's about that anymore," she said. "I think everybody just looks forward to coming out here. It's a big party weekend."

Still, the day will come -- perhaps next year at the 25th annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin -- when somebody shoots a pumpkin a mile. When it happens, all the other competitors will gather around to offer their congratulations and raise a toast or two.

Then they'll go to right back to work figuring out how to make a pumpkin fly even farther.

Learn More: World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association