THE BALLOON MAN

Pumpkins reign in Sussex
Punkin Chunkin's fame draws people near and far


The Chunkin Up team is one of 20 entrants in the adult-crewed air cannon category, which drew the most contestants at Saturday's World Championship Punkin Chunkin near Bridgeville.
 Chuck Snyder/Special to The News Journal
Written by Jeff Montgomery, The News Journal
from: delawareonline.com
Nov 3, 2012, 11:48 PM
Timothy Shirk, of Lancaster, Pa., made it absolutely clear on Saturday that spectacle, and not science, prompted his family’s three-hour trek to Bridgeville for an hours-long vigil near the 27th Annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin’s firing line.
“Nope, I’m a drinker,” Shirk summed up as wife Rosanna, son Darrius and friend Sheldon Martin huddled around a lunch of barbecue and beverages, watching frozen gourds trace improbable arcs across Saturday’s gray and windy skies after the whoosh of a catapult or drawn-out “chuff” from an air cannon.
“We were here last year and we enjoyed it. We saw it on the Discovery Channel for a number of years before we made it out here. It’s something that we like – it’s just a cool thing to do and watch. We left at about 5:15 this morning to get here.”
Thousands of visitors from Delaware and beyond thought much the same thing at about the same time, jamming the two-lane roads around the still-damp cornfield for Saturday’s first round of launchings. Waits of an hour and more were not uncommon just to reach the furrowed farm field turned parking lot.
For Punkin Chunkin spokesman Frank Shade, it was nothing less than just right.
“The crowd is excellent,” Shade said Saturday afternoon. “We’re very happy with the people who have shown up after all we’ve been through with the storm. We have a full midway and we haven’t had any significant problems.”
Hurricane Sandy’s recent approach and near miss dumped about 8.5 inches of rain on Bridgeville over a roughly four-day period, and 9 to 11 inches of rain on areas surrounding the Punkin Chunkin grounds. Standing water remained here and there in fields used for parking, and continuous traffic turned some low spots into muddy traps.
None of that took attention away from the 114, full-house lineup of launching teams, representing 14 states as far away as Colorado. The largest category – adult-crewed air cannons – drew 20 entrants. Trebuchets, a kind of counterweight-powered sling used for sieges during the Middle Ages, were the second-most popular, with 17.
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http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20121104/NEWS/311040043?source=nletter-top5&nclick_check=1