Real Whoppers

A good pumpkin, like a good lie, creates wonder and, sometimes, suspicion. This time of year, in the Lake Arrowhead area in the San Bernardino Mountains, plants and lies grow bigger by the day, and growers anticipate a bumper crop of both.

Cheri Altmeyer, 37, and her 3-year-old son, Brian, kissed their seeds in early June before gently placing them into the ground like soft petals. The Altmeyers are the reigning pumpkin champs, and as they embark on this new season, they aim to keep it that way.

Between now and October, however, they and their fellow contestants must avoid or overcome a litany of potential downfalls, including gophers and thieves and bugs and bears. They will utilize secret techniques and spy on their competitors, who are doing the same. The winner, with little fanfare, will be crowned around Halloween.

The contest, sponsored by a local grocery store, is in its 13th year. To win, pumpkins need not be particularly handsome, fine skinned or well proportioned, as this is no beauty contest. There are no subjective contingencies, and merit is based on one clearly defined objective. The heaviest pumpkin wins.

The aesthetics are in the deceit. When contestants see one another at the post office or the store, lies come buzzing out of their mouths like crazed bees from a ransacked hive.

“Golf-ball size,” one might say in a perfectly steady voice.

“Tennis balls,” the other will say with a sly grin.

When entrants see one another at the nursery, they peer out of the corners of their eyes to see what fertilizers their competitors might reach for on the shelves.

“Should work just fine on my roses,” one might say at the cash register, just loud enough for the other to hear.

And that is how the game is played. Every once in a while, just to complicate matters, someone will tell the truth. It’s a dirty, lowdown trick, but no one ever said growing pumpkins was for the squeaky clean.

And since they can’t trust their competitors’ words, they resort to espionage. Jerry Fulton’s size-9 1/2 footprints are all over the mountain, most frequently somewhere near a pumpkin patch.

“It’s all part of the fun,” he says.

The Altmeyers used to have a burro named Jacques that would bray whenever Fulton, founder of the contest, approached. Cheri Altmeyer would hear the commotion, step out on the deck and shout, “What’s going on down there?”

And there, gazing at her pumpkins, would be Fulton and, oftentimes, Altmeyer’s neighbor Ron Bench, another contestant, taking inventory.

“Oh, just poisoning your plants,” Fulton would say.

“Don’t you guys have anything better to do?”

Turns out they didn’t. Bench, a retired firefighter, now runs his own painting business but focuses on that which brings him closer to life’s truer meaning: family, friends, pumpkins.

Fulton, after graduating from the local high school in 1957 and quitting college after six years, embarked on a search for his place in life. He managed a couple of businesses in the area and, finally, a few years ago, discovered his true calling.

“Retirement,” he says.

So at age 63, Fulton focuses on pumpkins, his first grandchild and “shooting the breeze” with friends. Every morning he goes to the post office to pick up the mail, and, perhaps, stop at the store to pick up a few things. It’s a process that could be completed in, say, 20 minutes, but it takes him up to three hours.

All the entrants, it seems, get into the spirit of the contest. Indeed, when Fulton returns home after a pleasant afternoon of spying, he is likely to notice a few unfamiliar footprints around his own carefully raked garden.

In other parts of the country, primarily in New England, pumpkin growing is serious business, like hogs in Iowa, football in Texas or pedicures in Beverly Hills. Pumpkins the size of SUVs earn thousands of dollars in prize money. Contestants install expensive surveillance and irrigation systems. As harvest approaches, they sleep next to their pumpkins to protect them from ne’er-do-wells.

But here the competition is friendly, and no one sleeps with pumpkins. They are liars but not cheaters. They’re not vying for thousands of dollars in prize money. Altmeyer last year took home a winner’s check for $200, the most ever, and the honor of hosting this year’s end-of-the-season barbecue.

Here they do it not for fame or fortune but for the fun and challenge, they say. If nothing else, it keeps them off the streets.

“Bragging rights is the main thing,” Fulton says.

So far this year there are nine entrants, although there still may be a few latecomers. Each June they start ponying up their $15, which goes toward prize money, and setting forth on secret strategies, ranging from well-timed applications of burro manure or seaweed or fish extract to the use of gizmos and gadgets and experimental techniques.

Last year Bench, Altmeyer’s neighbor, seemed a shoo-in. When his pumpkin was placed on the butcher’s scale, it weighed in at 187 pounds, breaking his old record.

One of the rules--there aren’t many--is that when it comes time to remove the pumpkin from the vine, someone else from the contest must serve as witness. This is to discourage anyone from driving to Canada, buying a 1,000-pounder and then entering it here.

Last year Altmeyer called Fulton. They removed her pumpkin from the garden, loaded it up and took it down to Jensen’s, the store in nearby Blue Jay that sponsors the contest and where each pumpkin is weighed. When they placed it on the scale, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Altmeyer and Fulton hugged in disbelief. It was a glorious moment in local pumpkin history. For the first time ever, the 200-pound mark had been surpassed. Altmeyer’s prized fruit weighed in at 208 pounds. There were tears in Fulton’s eyes.

Bench was left scratching his head. His karma, however, is good, and he will certainly be a force to be reckoned with this time around. Each year he gives away some of his plants, hoping others will join in the fun. To him, the competition is about more than winning and lying and espionage. It’s about being a good neighbor.

“There was a time when you baked two pies,” he says, “one for yourself and one for the neighbors. We’ve gotten away from that.”

He and Fulton have formed an alliance this year. Fulton shared with him some seeds he bought from an undisclosed source. Their hopes have been raised.

This is a pivotal year for Fulton. Shortly after planting this year’s crop, he and his wife, Kay, put their home of 33 years on the market. Their two children grew up in the house. Jerry did all the stonework, building a waterfall and pond and a network of bridges in the yard.

He says that even if the house sold tomorrow, he would make sure he was able to finish one last season in his beloved garden, where he has diligently worked to improve the soil and where he drew Kay’s wrath last year when he cut down two trees that were blocking the light.

“She almost killed me over that one,” he says.

They will probably buy another home, a smaller place, in the area, one with a nice sunny spot for pumpkins. But that he must say goodbye to his beloved patch makes him the sentimental favorite this year.

On the other hand, he could be lying through his teeth about the whole thing.

Ah, spring. Cheri Altmeyer lives for it. She sometimes thinks she was meant for an earlier time, when people lived off the land. When the weather turns warm, she starts spending more and more time outdoors. The housework doesn’t always get done as promptly and fully as it does in winter, but dinner still gets put on the table, and no one is wearing dirty underwear, she says.

So give her a break.

Her husband, Jeff, owns a construction business. In the winter he plows snow, and when he has time in the summer, he helps in the garden. They have three children, all of whom have taken their turns as babies seated at garden’s edge as Cheri dug in the dirt. The girls are school-age now, so many days it is just Cheri and Brian tending to the pumpkins.

She has been in the contest since its inception and won it the first two years. Her first winning pumpkin weighed a mere 40 pounds--each year the winner has tipped the scales further. There was a long dry spell before last year’s return to pumpkin glory. In between victories, there was heartbreak.

One year, her best pumpkin was stolen right before the competition. She thinks she knows who did it, and it was no one associated with the contest, just a person with an uncontrolled liking for big pumpkins.

Then there was the year a gopher dug a tunnel right underneath her biggest pumpkin, chewed its way inside and ate out the innards. When they went to lift it, it was hollowed out. There are various means of discouraging gophers from ravaging pumpkins. Most of them end in death. If there is a dark side to pumpkin growers, it has to do with their relationship with gophers.

Altmeyer has slain them with garden tools and now utilizes a death trap known as “the black hole.” She may not like them, but she respects them. “They’re smarter than you think,” she says.

Brad and Cathy Burns, like Altmeyer, seem to be somewhat normal. Well, maybe not normal. One year Brad drove to Yucaipa on Valentine’s Day and returned with a unique expression of his love for Cathy: a load of chicken poop.

“Who else would do that?” Cathy swoons.

They have twice won the contest and are, above all, ethical people. Brad, 47, works in law enforcement for the U.S. Forest Service; Cathy, 40, is a substitute teacher. While some pumpkin growers, Fulton among them, do not entrust pollination to natural elements and take matters into their own hands, Cathy would never dream of interfering with such an intimate process.

“We’re Catholic,” she says.

But when it comes to gophers, no reference is made to the Vatican. The Burnses are not opposed to traps or electrical current or the old hose-down-the-hole routine, whatever means might rid their patch of the intruders, which last year gutted their best pumpkin. Pity the gopher that tries it again this year.

Bears, however, are a different story. One of the competitors, Ron Dolman, reported that his pumpkins were dug up this year by a bear, forcing him to replant and start anew. If he’s telling the truth, he may not be able to catch up with the others. One year Dolman showed up at the weigh-ins with a pumpkin torn up into numerous pieces. Bears, he said. Still, he put on his best showing. One by one the pieces were placed on the scale. It was a sad sight.

There also has been scandal, or at least near-scandal, in the contest. One entrant used to have his employees grow his pumpkins. It just didn’t seem right, the others decided, so they made a rule that contestants had to grow their own pumpkins on their own property.

This year’s favorites, Fulton says, are Bench, the retired firefighter, and the defending champions, the Altmeyers. The Altmeyers already have suffered a setback, though. Seeds they paid $5 each for proved to be rotten, forcing a second planting. Fortunately, they kept seeds from last year’s winner.

There also are dark horses. One of them is Ron McAllister, a relative newcomer who has never won but who has people talking this year. It seems, says Fulton, that rather than mixing fertilizer into the soil, McAllister has planted his seeds directly into piles of chicken manure.

“He hedged on that the other night, so I’m not sure,” says Fulton.

“Might work,” says Bench, raising a brow.

McAllister’s pumpkins are planted on the side of a hill, where they get plenty of sunlight. His plants are off to a strong start--already the size of redwoods--and surrounded by size-9 1/2 footprints.