Check Your Wallet Before You Get Here
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Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Andy Gipson checks his wallet as bidding heats up during last year’s Watermelon Carnival melon auction.
The Watermelon Carnival officially begins Thursday, but don’t tell that to the folks growing the big melons. Their competition never really stops, although the smack talk usually picks up in early July.
That’s when conversations shift to how hot it will be at this year’s carnival, who has the biggest watermelon, who is bluffing and who might need to bring a little extra cash to the melon auction.
If you’ve never stayed around for the auction that follows the Largest Melon Contest, you’re missing one of the best shows of the weekend.
It’s part fundraiser, part entertainment and part bragging rights.
Sometimes the biggest competition isn’t growing the watermelon. It’s buying it.
Take the carnival two years ago.
Weeks before the first watermelon was weighed, folks were already talking about who would leave with Hal Vaughn’s giant melon after the auction. The conversation eventually narrowed to two names — Brandon Presley, then a newcomer to Water Valley, and Dr. Harry Rayburn, whose dental office was on Main Street.
The friendly banter became weekly entertainment, especially on Thursdays at the BTC, where the crew at the Old Man’s Table has solved just about every problem in America except who was going to buy the watermelon. Before long, the rivalry spilled onto the pages of the Herald as the claims got bigger and the predictions bolder.
When the auctioneer finally opened the bidding, Rayburn backed up the talk by shelling out 21 Benjamins to buy Hal Vaughn’s winning melon, setting a Watermelon Carnival auction record at $2,100.
Presley still claims he played it perfectly.
His version is that he ran the price up just enough before stepping aside at exactly the right time.
The Chamber even presented Rayburn with a special award recognizing the record-setting purchase.
Of course, the growers don’t mind stirring the pot either. A few years ago, one of the favorite Herald stories that stirred the pot focused on Jerry Vaughn. Known to choose his words carefully, he finally offered a prediction after a little coaxing.
“I’m in it to win it.”
Coming from Jerry Vaughn, that got people’s attention.
As it turned out, he wasn’t bluffing. Jerry has a real knack for getting an early fruit set, and that year his biggest melon had been growing longer than anyone else’s. Hal Vaughn, a distant cousin and serious competitor, wasn’t far behind, setting up a friendly family rivalry that had folks keeping a close eye on the scales.
When the weigh-in was over, Jerry’s confidence proved justified. His melon weighed 152.5 pounds, just enough to edge Hal’s 148.8-pound second-place entry. Hal said another day of growing before he pulled it, and the outcome may have been different.
If Jerry Vaughn is known for carefully chosen words, another competitor, Kenny Harmon, has earned a reputation for saying almost nothing at all.
Whether it’s a 75-pound watermelon or one pushing 200 pounds, he’ll load it up and bring it to the contest. Other growers typically stay home if they don’t think they can contend for the title. You never know what to expect.
The best example came during the 2024 carnival.
Kenny downplayed his chances, offering only that his biggest watermelon would weigh “over 100 pounds.” That turned out to be technically correct.
It also turned out to be one of the greatest understatements in recent carnival history.
Kenny arrived with a 196.1-pound giant, one of the top five biggest melons ever entered in the contest despite insisting that county road work (he is a county supervisor) and a busy summer had kept him from giving his melon patch much attention.
Then, after claiming second place in an unusually intense field that year, Kenny smiled and offered another gem.
“Hopefully next year I can get serious about growing a big watermelon.”
Those who know Kenny weren’t sure what to believe. Maybe it was a lot of sweat and time, maybe it was a few tricks up his sleeve, or maybe he has that old-school knowledge. He joked he ought to graft a watermelon to a kudzu vine.
With Kenny, it’s often hard to tell where the joke ends and the experiment begins.
Those stories are part of what keeps people coming back every year. Last year, Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Andy Gipson was digging through his wallet as the bidding heated up. Whether he was looking for cash or just checking to see if he had enough, nobody knows. Either way, it made for another classic Watermelon Carnival photograph.
So if you stick around for the auction, here’s one piece of advice.
Check your wallet before you get here.
