Photo by Corey Perrine
by WES FERGUSON
If you’re a veteran of Texas summers, then you’ve probably chowed down on your fair share of Black Diamond watermelons. Chomp into the exquisite pink to red flesh and spit out a mouthful of seeds. It’s almost second nature, as long as you have a paper plate or a patch of grass handy.
Spitting for distance, now, that’s a little more complicated, says Jamie Nickells, the chairman of seed spitting at the Luling Watermelon Thump.
“You want to skip it like a rock,” he says. “If you can bounce the seed in the proper direction, it can add quite a bit to the spit.”
Some competitors take running starts. Others roll up their tongue to form a gun barrel-esque seed projection apparatus. Either way, “the spit” has become one of the most ballyhooed events at the watermelon thump, which draws tens of thousands of festival-goers to Luling and has been held every June since 1954.
The four-day event in the railroad town of Luling, about 30 miles southeast of Kyle, kicks off the evening of June 21 with champion melon judging, a carnival with about 25 rides, queen coronation, live music, arts and crafts and other festival fare. Children will compete in the seed spitting contest on Friday evening, an event that is said to be can’t-miss.
“If you’re from one year old to four years old, you’re actually pretty adorable spitting seeds,” said Nickells, who in addition to being the chairman of seed spitting is a longtime civic leader and 20-year board member of the Luling Watermelon Thump Association.
A parade and the “world championship seed spitting contest” are Saturday, and the Sunday wrap-up includes team spitting and free music. Along with a car show, arts and crafts and beer garden, for the first time ever this year the thump will feature a mechanical bull shaped like a watermelon.
Photo by Brenda Stewart
“You name it we’ve got it,” Nickells said.
During other times of the year, Luling draws visitors for its barbecue, canoe trips on the San Marcos River and potty breaks at the mammoth flagship Bucc-ee’s convenience store on Interstate 10, Nickells said.
Luling wasn’t always known for its watermelons. The area was settled on the banks of Plum Creek just upstream from its confluence with the San Marcos River. The town hit the big time when a wildcatter struck oil in 1922, and today the downtown business district — featuring a row of old-timey storefronts facing the railroad tracks — still carries a whiff of crude oil production in the air.
All within a walking distance of a few blocks there are antique shops, old drug stores, an oil museum, farmers market and palm tree-shaded park along the rail line in the town of 5,500. On an afternoon earlier this spring, City Market was hopping with barbecue patrons, sunburned farmers offered stacks of melons, tomatoes and local honey, and the proprietor of an old movie theater-turned-antique store was happy to give an impromptu tour of the balcony where black people watched films during the era of segregation.
The Watermelon Shop in downtown Luling is banking on the popularity of the popular produce and sells everything that has to do with watermelon, except the actual watermelon. But luckily you don’t have to walk far to find one of those. (Photo by David White)
Watermelons were first grown in the area in the 1950s and remain one of Luling’s cash crops, leading to plenty of seed spitting come the summer months. Nickells has spit a seed 42 or 44 feet, which wouldn’t win a lot of contests by his own estimation. Luling’s world record is 68 feet, 9 inches.
Hawking a seed out of your mouth low and straight so it skips like a rock down the concrete runway is easier said than done, he added.
“You can have a little bit of a wind factor. You can have a little bit of a luck factor. There’s probably no way to say, ‘Make this seed come out and land flat,’” he said.
Just remember it’s all for laughs.
“We take the contest seriously because we want to have a true and fair, winning contest, but at the same time it’s got to be fun,” he said. “If you’re going to worry about how you look, then you’re going to waste a lot of energy up there. You’re going to look pretty silly. Don’t worry, go with it.”
Photo by David White
Palmetto State Park
Ten miles southeast of Luling, Spanish moss-draped cypress trees offer shade for a carpet of spiky dwarf palmettos that populate the only swamp of its kind in the American Southwest.
The ubiquitous palmetto plants – green, fanlike bushes in the palm family more at home in the tropics than in Central Texas – are the namesake of Palmetto State Park, a 268-acre retreat on the banks of the San Marcos River in Gonzales County.
Walk the nature trails, admire the grand stone refectory erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, or rent a pedal boat and tool around the four-acre oxbow formed when the river changed its course ages ago, leaving the little lake behind.
“A lot of people come here to fish, for the birdwatching and picnicking,” said Gina Wrehsnig, a parks employee who was manning the front office and gift shop on a recent afternoon.
The park also offers a hands-on outdoor adventure and ecology program for children ages 8 to 12 during the first two weeks of June.
Palmetto State Park
78 Park Road 11 South, Gonzales
www.tpwd.state.tx.us/palmetto
830-672-3266
Hungry?
The real reason we chose to feature Luling in All Around Hays this month? It had nothing to do with watermelon and everything to do with the legendary meats smoked in an old red building beside the railroad tracks.
From a small, smoke-filled room at the back of City Market, pitmasters have been ringing up orders for decades to long lines of pilgrims who travel from across the nation to sample the moist, peppery brisket, meaty ribs and glistening, coarse-ground sausage rings all wrapped up in butcher paper.
Just be sure to bring cash or hit up the ATM before your moment of truth at the soot-stained cash register. The pit crew doesn’t have much patience for the uninitiated.
Sides are ordered at a separate counter, but options are limited to pinto beans and potato salad. The meat is really all you need, as long as you don’t forget the barbecue sauce.
And speaking of sauce: While those other famous ’cue establishments up the road in Lockhart eschew sauce on their hit-or-miss meats, City Market offers up a concoction like none other in Texas – sweet, light and bright mustard-orange sauce to drizzle with pride on the pile of beef. The folks in Lockhart don’t know what they’re missing.
City Market
633 E. Davis St.
830-875-9019
Open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Monday-Saturday, Closed Sunday
