                      IN SEARCH OF THE BIG MOTHER PUMPKIN
                by Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist


          Halloween is  here,  and when we think of Halloween, we think of
     pumpkins, which are  big  vegetables;    and  when  we  think  of big
     vegetables, we must, as  responsible  citizens,  resist  the childish
     temptation to make gratuitous references to the vice president.

          So  instead  let's focus our  attention  on  the  World  Pumpkin
     Confederation.  This is a real  organization  I  found out about when
     alert reader Paula Linter sent me a  letter  stating that her husband
     had become obsessed with growing an enormous pumpkin  in  their  back
     yard.

          "I should have had a clue," she writes, "when  the pumpkin began
     to dominate conversations with friends and family:

          "FRIEND:  How are you?

          "HUSBAND:  Well, it's 2 pounds heavier today!

          "FRIEND:  Ooooooh hayeeeeee..."

          Paula adds:  "There is a club where seemingly normal  people get
     together and weigh their giant vegetables.  We are now members.    He
     sent money for this."

          This club  turns  out  to  be  the  World Pumpkin Confederation.
     Paula sent me  a  WPC  newsletter, and it is the finest publication I
     have ever seen that  is  devoted  to  the  topic  of growing enormous
     pumpkins.    It  has,  for   example,  a  detailed  article  entitled
     "Fertilizing with Bat Guano." But the  most  impressive  part  is the
     photographs:   page after page of people  standing  proudly  next  to
     pumpkins significantly larger than Charles Kuralt.

          I called the World Pumpkin Confederation founder and  president,
     Ray Waterman of Collins, N.Y.  He told me  that  the  WPC  has  2,000
     members from 30 nations.  

          "Basically,"  he  said,"  we're  in  this  to  grow  the largest
     possible pumpkin."

          Ray  Waterman has grown a pumpkin weighing more than 600 pounds.
     The world record is more than 800 pounds.

          But  that's  not good enough for the growers of the WPC.   Their
     goal  -  their  quest,  their obsession, their Mount Everest - is the
     1,000-pound pumpkin.

          "We'll do  it  by  the turn of the century," says Waterman, with
     quiet confidence.

          Each year, the  WPC  sponsors an annual weigh-off featuring cash
     prizes, at official sites  around  the world;  each year, the winning
     weights creep closer to the  Big  Mother  Pumpkin.    Whoever finally
     grows it will be, quite simply, a legend.

          Of course, when emotional stakes are  this  high, you inevitably
     have conflict.  There was, for example,  the incident at the 1989 WPC
     All New England Weigh-off held in Topsfield, Mass.   According to the
     WPC  newsletter,  the  weigh-off  went normally until the arrival  of
     Robert Gancarz, a New Jersey resident who at the time  just  happened
     to  be  the defending world record holder.  He trucked in  a  pumpkin
     weighing  619.5  pounds  - the heaviest at Topsfield.  But some other
     competitors, objecting to an "outsider" competing, threatened to walk
     out.  With  trouble  brewing  and  press  on the scene, the local WPC
     official asked Gancarz to  withdraw  his pumpkin in an effort, as the
     newsletter puts it, "to defuse  an inflammatory situation and to stem
     possible international embarrassment for the WPC."

          Gancarz did withdraw his pumpkin, even  though, under WPC rules,
     he was allowed to compete wherever he  chose.  This incident outraged
     WPC  president  Ray  Waterman,  who  declared  Gancarz the  Topsfield
     winner.   Waterman still sounded ticked off when I  asked  him  about
     this.

          "Those  people  in  New  England  are  fruity," he said.   "They
     bounced  out  the  world  record  holder!   They're out of the  World
     Pumpkin  Confederation.   If you don't have any more brain cells than
     that, you don't belong in a world organization."

          Waterman also  has  strong  views on other topics, including the
     sloppy  way some  organizations  establish  "world  records"  in  the
     vegetable arena.

          "'The Guinness Book of World Records,'" he snorts, "is listing a
     66-pound cucumber that's actually a gourd."

          Blunt words?  Yes.   But sometimes blunt words are needed.  In a
     world of mealymouthed mumblers, Ray Waterman's  voice  rings out loud
     and  clear, sounding the charge as the  WPC  seeks  to  go  where  no
     gardener has gone before.  You can become part of this by sending $15
     to the World Pumpkin Confederation, 14050 Gowanda State Rd., Collins,
     NY  14034.    The newsletter alone is worth it.   You  can  also  buy
     official T-shirts, caps, etc.  And who knows:  You might even grow an
     actual pumpkin.

          "Even  if  you  don't have much space," Waterman notes, "you can
     compete in the Long Gourd category."

          Waterman has  the  world  record  here, with a gourd measuring 8
     feet, 3 inches.    To  give  you a totally non-gratuitous idea of how
     long that is, if  you  were to lay such a gourd down next to the vice
     president, you would have a very strong ticket for 1996.
          
