LULING, Texas — Here's a juicy tip: The Luling Watermelon Thump is happening this weekend! The 66th annual thump celebrates all things – you guessed it – watermelon.
Not only is 'thump' just a fun name for the festival, but there's some history behind it too. When it first started, there was a contest to help to name the event. Thump won because "thumping" is what you do to test if a watermelon is ripe.
The event will include live music, seed spitting contests, a parade, an auction, a car show and, of course, lots of watermelon eating.
This week Bubba Damon, chairman of the 2019 Watermelon Thump, racked up some sleepless nights preparing for this year's festival.
"This is our 66th Watermelon Thump and we're celebrating the watermelons being grown here. They were loaded on trains years ago and then it went to trucks. The festival was organized to celebrate the watermelons," Damon said. "We have a watermelon contest where you go out in the field and they bring in their biggest watermelons. We judge them and weigh them on Saturday and we auction them off to highest bidder."
Damon said festival-goers can expect to see thousands of watermelons this weekend. He wears a lot of hats, making sure everything is good to go leading up to festival time.
However, only one can wear the crown.
"I like the small town environment really. It's a good place to live," said 2018 Thump Queen, Kendal Gibson.
Gibson won the competition last year. The 18-year-old just graduated from Luling High School and has plans to attend Blinn College in Bryan to work toward becoming a dental hygienist. She shared she was looking forward to passing the reign off to the next queen.
The 2019 Thump Queen was announced Thursday night. Congratulations to Miss Valerie Bermudez!
In the town of Luling, "spitting game," takes on a whole other meaning. It's also home to World Championship Seed Spitting Contest.
"When you were little you were told, 'don't spit, don't spit, it's gross! Don't do it!' But here we embrace it and we try to get as many people to come out and spit as much as possible," said Dayton Gonzales, Watermelon Thump Director who is also in charge of the seed spitting.
Gonzales said the record spit was in 1989 at 68 feet and 9 and 1/8 inches. When asked if anyone had ever come close, she said in 2018 there was an 'unofficial spit' that traveled farther than that. However, it was not during competition time, so it didn't count.
All ages are welcomed to compete, but there is a cap of 30 spitters. Previous winners qualify to compete, but everyone else is drawn from a lottery.
"If you have a baby that wants to spit, they can come out to do it," Gonzales said.
The prize? Bragging rights for being a good spitter, $500 cash and a trophy.
As popular and fun as the seed spitting competition is, who and what it all truly goes back to is the growers.
Allen Watts won the Watermelon Thump Growers contest in 2018 with an 86 pound, 2-ounce melon. His advice for growing a winning fruit is simple.
"Number one: it takes good soil, good sandy soil, then a small amount of fertilizer, a lot of work and just taking care of the vines," Watts said.
Watts has now won the competition three times. His father won it in 1962, holding onto the title until 2005 when Watts and his son took it from him with an 81-pound melon. The biggest melon to win was in 2016, weighing in at 106 pounds.
Like his award-winning fruit, Watts is home-grown. His roots are deep in Luling. Watts said there's a reason good: sweet things grow there.
"We're so together. We're family. Everybody knows everybody, and just for instance, this is a perfect example right here. We leave these stands wide open every night. Nobody touches nothing," he explained. "You can come back the next morning, you might have a basket of tomatoes gone, but you'll have $3 stuck under the other basket."
It's that kind of hospitality that Watts said he hopes visitors get to experience this weekend when they come in for the festival.
"Happiness I guess is the word for it," he said.
The festival runs through Sunday, June 30. To keep up with all the events and performances, click here.
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