Chunkin should return to its roots

In its earliest years, Punkin Chunkin carried a medieval feel. Trebuchets, catapults, slingshots, men jumping on the ends of seesaw boards - they were just a few of the ingenious devices that captured people’s imaginations. Mixed in were hurling tractors and, the most dramatic of all, lights-flashing, horn-blaring centrifugal machines that made spectators gasp when gracefully arching pumpkins climbed to impossible heights in clear blue autumn skies.

Then came the earliest air cannons, and with them, eventually, the end of Punkin Chunkin as we once knew and loved it. The cannons brought controversy from the start.

They stretched the limits of one of Punkin Chunkin’s earliest rules: no explosives. But the powers that be acquiesced and the cannons soon dominated competition. Their ever-increasing distances - approaching a mile - required larger and larger fields. But for the spectators, the worst part of the cannons was the loss of seeing pumpkins fly. The cannons shoot with such force that the greatest majority of people see little more than a steamy blast with the pumpkin long gone into the distance.

This year, for the first time in nearly three decades, there will be no pumpkins flying through the skies of Sussex County on its traditional weekend following Halloween.

That weekend was originally chosen because chunkers knew they could count on a good supply of pumpkins.

After the World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association lost the Bridgeville venue that had been home the last few years, it announced it would be moving the competition to the Dover Downs grounds that host the popular Firefly music festival.

Mired in insurmountable tasks related to the move, however, the association announced last week that it has to cancel this year’s event and resume next year.

This announcement gives Punkin Chunkin an opportunity to revisit its roots.

Let some other venue take the air cannons and return, here, to the more human-scale chunkin machines that first defined the competition. Such a return - with a smaller field requirement - would open many more venue possibilities and, most of all, allow Punkin Chunkin to return to its native Sussex County.