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The talk begins in July. “Are we going? Have you blocked off your calendar?”
The internet is filled with popular YouTube videos documenting festivals called “Punkin Chunkin,” which is a competition held around the country in places such as Clayton, New York, Vinita, Oklahoma, and Bluemont, Virginia, with the ultimate goal of taking home a trophy for having built and operated a machine that tosses pumpkins the farthest distance.
Imagine my delight when I learned that Western North Carolina has our very own Punkin Chunkin festival located over the river, through the woods, up the road, turn left onto Settawig Road, and then left again into the cow pasture not long after arriving in unincorporated Brasstown, North Carolina.
Yes, those are actual directions. Tell the truth, just reading the words Punkin Chunkin makes y’all want to know more, doesn’t it?
Being married to an engineer has its privileges. I can literally hear an idea rolling around in that mathematical brain of his, which is why I knew I wouldn’t need to twist his arm, not even a little, upon learning of this festival. This event was perfect for us because he had the opportunity to get up close and personal with machines. I, of course, lean toward the less mathematical side of life. Give me some outside time and a brisket sandwich and I’m happy. You know the saying: opposites attract. My newlywed daughter and her awesome husband joined us. My son-in-law’s middle name might as well be “Go.” If there’s an event or festival nearby, he is all in; especially if there’s food and anything mechanical, which there was, aplenty.
Deep fried turkey leg anyone?
We didn’t really know what to expect the first time we went. My husband was thrilled to have the opportunity to learn how the machines were constructed and meet the owners and pelt them with questions. The contestants ages varied from pre-teen to Medicare-eligible and included a grandpa-grandson team called the “Witches Brew Crew” who operated an air cannon. The goal of the event was, of course, to see whose equipment could hurl their pumpkin the greatest distance without disturbing the neighbor’s horses, which were grazing in the field on the opposite side of the river.
We learned that no one had ever flung a member of the Cucurbita genus into to the river, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Even the air cannons, which were ferocious beasts that cut through the silence with an earsplitting whoosh and a plume of moisture, hadn’t made it across the rapids. Chunk a punkin in the river and trumpets would sound just as glitter rained down from heaven. Or so we first-timers believed.
Honestly, those cannons felt like cheating, because everyone knows that in the 1300s the castle walls of Scotland were constructed to protect fair maidens. Besides, air cannons hadn’t even been invented. But the trebuchet certainly had.
The trebuchet harkens back to medieval times and was the fiercest weapon in all the land, capable of launching projectiles weighing upward of 400 pounds, which definitely damaged castle walls. Here in Brasstown, they were perfectly happy to launch pumpkins weighing under 10 pounds. Perhaps it is in our DNA to be drawn to these machines that look so simple but are truly powerful.
By far, our favorite machine was a combination trebuchet and torsion catapult built by two neighbors who live in central North Carolina. The machine—named Tim—was constructed entirely of wood and boasted a large arm. Tim’s mechanics used tension to launch pumpkins from a mesh-type net. It’s hard to spot a pumpkin when it is flying through the blue sky, which is why crew members alternated white and orange pumpkins, and why only one team launched at a time.
Instead of using a mechanism that twists rope like a torsion does, a crank tightened two thick bands of rubber until just the right moment where Tim released the pumpkin and it sailed across the sky. Fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail will recognize the name Tim, and the crew stayed in character with each launch as they loudly counted, “One, Two ... Five !” Of course, no Holy Grail trebuchet is complete without a fierce white rabbit protectively perched atop the pumpkins.
By the end of the day, both the men of my family vowed to build a machine whereby “we” would enter the competition. However, they couldn’t agree on whether to build a trebuchet or a centrifuge. The husband wanted to construct a centrifuge if for no other reason than there wasn’t one on display and perhaps we could be proclaimed winners of the centrifuge category by default. I asked him to explain his thought process which he was only too happy to oblige in great engineering-termed-details. Physics was involved as were other terms such as: energy transfer, trajectory, velocity and gravity.
I may have nodded off for a moment.
Everything sounded doable until he said, “I’m not sure how to ensure that the pumpkin will launch forward instead of letting go whenever the machine wants.” He proceeded to show me a YouTube video whereby a metal machine with a ginormous propeller-type blade spun and vibrated and looked like it was in the process of having a complete come apart moments before it released a pumpkin. I couldn’t help but notice there was no shot of where the pumpkin actually landed. I also noticed several men trying to hold the machine together.
I gave the centrifuge idea a thumbs down.
“What about the human-powered category,” I said with a hopeful lilt in my voice. “They didn’t have any entries for that category either.”
“Who wants a funnel cake? I’m buying.” My son-in-law said as he made his exit from the conversation.
Whatever the men decide to build, my daughter and I will be wearing hardhats come October in Brasstown.