Carnival Memories Include Scorchers, Storms And That 2016 ‘Explosion’
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The big 50 Annual Watermelon Carnival in 2019 will long live in history as one of the most memorable. The highlight was a community-wide effort to set a new Guinness World Record for the largest watermelon eating contest. Although the rain came down and a storm loomed in the horizon, hundreds of people lined up in Crawford Sports Complex to set the world record.
DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
It was bound to happen, the forecast indicates it will be a scorcher August weekend for the carnival. While the last few years have been typical summer heat, this one will be a few degrees warmer. The forecast got me to thinking about an unusually cool, fall-like carnival weekend many years ago. I think it was around 2005 or 2006, and I recall a few blankets in the park that Friday night.
The memory triggered a deep dive into thousands of pictures stored in the newspaper archives since I started at the Herald in 2004. We have hundreds and hundreds of pictures from each carnival with the exception of 2020. In that folder is only a couple of pictures from the Biggest Watermelon Contest – the only event the pandemic didn’t claim.
The hunt for an image to validate that fuzzy memory was not successful, but I found plenty of other treasures. I decided to dedicate a few pages for a “Do You Remember?” portion of the section.
One forgotten carnival memory was in 2016 when a mysterious boom rocked City Park on a hot Friday afternoon. I had just arrived when the “explosion” rocked the southwest corner of the park. Apparently somebody put plenty of air in the tire of a two-wheeler dolly, and the added heat from a hot afternoon was too much. You wouldn’t think a small tire could cause that much commotion, but if the other tire had burst it would have been time to look for cover and dial 911.
Thankfully there was no one near “parked” dolly on the sidewalk. Comically it took a few minutes before those of us in the area located the culprit. I snapped my first picture of the day and later discovered the settings on my camera were off and it was overexposed. I never used it and forgot about the incident until this year. Check out the photo on page 33, I was able to work on it in Photoshop and make it semi-presentable.
Other memories from the archives included pictures of intense thunderstorm, usually brief, that scattered the crowds and the tents. That made me think about the 50th Carnival, the big one back in 2019. The weather that Saturday was perfect until late afternoon when hundreds gathered at Crawford Sports Complex for the world’s largest watermelon eating contest.
A slow, steady rain started to fall as hundreds were lining up to sign in. And if that wasn’t enough, a serious storm loomed in the distance with lightning illuminating the ever-darkening sky well before sunset.
There was a time when it looked like the entire event would have the be scrapped, and it was a wonder that anyone had cell service as hundreds of people had weather apps pulled up on their phones watching to see where the strong storm cell was tracking. Compounding the problem, those precious sign-in sheets that were critical to documenting the turnout to allow Guinness World records to validate the number of people attending weren’t faring much better. The registration line slowed to a crawl, delaying the 7 p.m. start time by more than an hour.
In the end the summer storm dissipated and the magical night was a success with the world record set with 745 participants.
The is the best thing about a Watermelon Carnival – each year is magical in its own way. Even if it is a scorcher (or wet).
