Highlanders’ Yearly Fling Highlights Sport, Culture, Kinship : Celebration: The 58th Annual Scottish Festival at the Orange County Fairgrounds draws 25,000 spectators for a day of pipes, plaid and pageantry.

Rob Renner spread his legs, splaying his blue-and-green kilt, and squatted to hoist a telephone pole to his shoulder. Balancing it, he took a few awkward steps forward, then broke into a run and heaved it.

The top of the pole landed squarely on the ground as it tumbled end-over-end. And 17 feet and 92 pounds worth of log completed a near-perfect cartwheel with a solid thud.

This is sport--Scottish style.

Saturday, 25,000 spectators gathered at the Orange County Fairgrounds to take part in the pageantry at the 58th annual Scottish Festival, which continues today.

They were rewarded with several bagpipe bands, authentic Scottish food, Highland folk dancers and unusual sports.

All sorts of people of Scottish descent took their turn Saturday at throwing the massive logs, called cabers. They heaved weights as heavy as water jugs over a high jump pole and tossed big stones as if shot-putting.

Renner, who said he “just started throwing logs for fun,” first tried the caber toss after learning the Olympic hammer throw.

“It’s a weird sensation,” the Redondo Beach resident said. “No sport compares to the caber.”

Renner is a burly man, but he said the caber toss requires more technique than strength. The trick, he said, is to balance the log while running and heave it just at the right moment to make the most of the momentum.

It’s not easy. In his second and third attempts, Renner came up short. The log fell backward, without the momentum needed to cartwheel.

The caber toss and the other games played Saturday were invented thousands of years ago on the grassy fields of Scotland, where the fiercest men of rival clans would match their might.

“The women liked their men strong,” said Doreen Murphy, a festival spokeswoman.

Saturday’s festival drew hundreds of lads with dirks fastened to their belts and wearing the round, brimless caps with pompons on top called balmorals. Thick socks were gartered above their calves, and they walked with black hardwood canes. And, of course, the lads and lasses wore dark plaid kilts.

“The girls love the kilts,” said athlete Pete McGraith, 32, of Huntington Beach. He explained that traditionally nothing is worn underneath the kilt. But he forsook tradition and donned swimming trunks Saturday. “Two years ago I didn’t (wear anything underneath) and I embarrassed myself,” he said.

Throughout the day, the high-pitched drone of bagpipes and the rattle of snare drums filled the air as curious Orange County residents poked through booths selling everything from candy to Celtic pewter goblets.

Michael Gibbs, 18, of Salt Lake City, stepped forward in slow, measured strides as his fingers fluttered in a blur over the holes of his bagpipe’s chanter, the pipe on which the melody is played.

In another attraction, a collie darted and swerved to herd a group of three ducks into a pen, demonstrating how the dogs were used in Scotland. Elsewhere, spry young lasses skipped on tiptoes, their backs locked straight and arms arching gracefully over their heads.

Jerry Best, 70, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. But he has lived in Burbank for more than 30 years and comes yearly to the festival.

“It’s like being home,” Best said in a flowing accent. “You’ve got your kinfolk here, your friends. . . . It’s history, ye know. It goes way back to the 15th Century.”

The honorary chieftain of the festival was Bernard Fox, who played Dr. Bombay on the “Bewitched” television series and the bungling Col. Crittendon on TV’s “Hogan’s Heroes.”

“It’s a great honor to be chieftain, but I deserve it because I almost single-handedly support the Scottish distilleries,” Fox joked.

“You’re supposed to ask me what is worn under my kilt,” he added.

“There is nothing worn under my kilt,” he said, punning. “Everything is in perfect working condition.”