Tag Archives: contest

Yankees Eating Contest

Nationality: American

Occupation: Corporate Event Planner

Residence: New York, NY

Language: English

Text:

In 1919, during Yankees spring training in Florida, a Yankees player boasted that he could eat more spaghetti than anyone else on the team. His teammates did not argue with him, because they had seen how much spaghetti he could eat. Eventually, his teammates got tired of him talking about how much he could eat, so they arranged for a spectacle of a competition they were sure he would lose; they would have him compete in an eating contest against an ostrich. Somehow they set up this eating contest between a ballplayer and an ostrich, and in the end the ballplayer won. He passed out after eating eleven plates of spaghetti, and the ostrich ran away after eating seven, making him the winner.

Context:

My aunt told me this story, and she first heard it from her great-uncle Pete Sheehy, who is famous for being the equipment manager and clubhouse attendant of the New York Yankees for 50 years. Sheehy had not yet joined the Yankees in 1919, so he would have heard this story from other players or employees that he worked with. When I asked her if she had any folk stories to share, she said that there were tons of stories involving the Yankees that were famous and well known, and she listed some like Babe Ruth calling his shot and Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech, but then she remembered and shared this story as a more niche Yankee moment.

Analysis:

There are tons of stories about the New York Yankees in the early 20th century that have become legends, but almost all of those stories are about how dominant the team was and how great all of the players were. This story is not about a great player, nor is it even about baseball. It is just a bizarre story. However, the detail that the food being eaten in the contest was spaghetti jumped out at me. The Yankees fan base has always had a large Italian American population, and at the time of this story Italian Americans were a marginalized group. The fact that a member of the “Murderer’s Row” Yankees, which is often still regarded as the best baseball team ever, was Italian and ate a lot of spaghetti would be incredibly significant to the Italian American fans who were underrepresented at that point in time. Given how my aunt repeated numerous times that the food was spaghetti, it was clearly an important part of the story.

Quickdraw Contest

Main Piece

“There was a quickdraw contest every year in West Central Minnesota. Mind you, this is mostly rural areas so these fuckers know how to use guns. Not safely, but efficiently. [The gun] is fully loaded, you pull it out of your holster, take six shots, you reload, and take six more shots. He [Nick] won…the first year he was in it. He won a .357, a Smith and Wesson. The next year, he won again and they gave him another revolver. The year after, he won again but they gave the gun to the second place winner.”

Background

Informant

Nationality: American

Location: Willmar, Minnesota

Language: English

The “cop” in the story is the informant’s great uncle Nick, but this and other stories were all originally told to the informant by the his great uncle’s brother, the informant’s Grandfather. The informant didn’t fully believe the stories until he attended Nick’s funeral. There, the informant heard the story told by other people, and now the informant completely believes the story.

The informant finds the story very funny, as did everyone else. Everyone who knew the story had a positive memory of both the informant’s great uncle and the story. Someone at the funeral commented to the informant the following: “The only thing that would surprise me about Nick is if any of those stories weren’t true.”

Although the informant was not born at the time of these events, he fully believes in them and the fact that his great uncle Nick was a great, if sometimes irresponsible, handler of guns. The story means a great deal to the informant, and is one of the main memories he has of Nick, who has since passed away.

Context

The informant’s great uncle was a police officer from the 1950’s to the 1980’s in West Central Minnesota, and the story occurred somewhere in this time period.

Notes

Nick’s prowess with guns and its influence on his identity speaks to the importance of guns in America as a defining characteristic of many people’s lives. I find this concept to be very interesting, especially as it is part of the reason why many people do not want to enact any kind of gun control.

 

Hairy Man Road

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: undergraduate student
Residence: Colorado, CA
Performance Date: 2017-3-18
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

 

Main piece:

Hairy man road is an actual road in Round Rock, Texas. There is a story that is circulated in the town that goes like this: “There was a little boy and his family was moving to Texas but he got separated from them somehow– maybe fell out of wagon– and he ends up living in woods but as he grows up he grows out of his clothes so because of adaptation he was just covered in hair from head to toe even his face was hairy. He was known as the hairy man of hairy man road and he didn’t know how to interact with people so he harassed everyone who came his way. One day he got run over by a car and his ghost lives there. People say they still see the ghost when they pass Hairy Man Road.”

There’s a Hairy Man Road festival in October and the hairiest men have a contest to see who’s the hairiest. The participants take off their shirts and there’s judges too. It’s held in the park across from the informant’s house and all ages show up for the event.

 

Informant also says she remembers being told that someone got hanged on the same road and you see his ghost too, which is a different story from the Hairy Man. There’s a lot of stories told to and from the residents about Hairy Man Road.

 

Background information (Why does the informant know or like this piece? Where or who did they learn it from? What does it mean to them?):

Informant grew up in Round Rock, Texas. She says she first heard the story in elementary school at a afterschool day care. A friend told her when everyone was sharing spooky stories. The road is actually spooky. She said it didn’t come to her mind that the festival remembering Hairy Man was weird to everyone else until she shared this with me.

Context (When or where would this be performed? Under what circumstance?):

It is a common stories told when sharing scary stories in Round Rock. Kids enjoy circulating the story to each other to scare each other. Because of the festival, the locals typically know the story already. When people drive by Hairy Man Road, a local might share to others if they are together in the car. It’s not really shared outside of the locals unless asked about. It’s not a secret, but it’s not common knowledge.

Personal Analysis:

I was surprised to hear about the legend of this road. I’ve never heard of it before, and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t ask a Round Rock local about their traditions. It’s interesting to hear and know about new small U.S. legends. I’m most shocked to find that a story that sounds fictional can become an annual festival. I’ve never experienced such a ridiculous and funny event before.

For another version of this proverb, see “The Legend of Hairy Man Road.” Weird Texas. Weirdus, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2017. http://weirdus.com/states/texas/bizarre_beasts/hairy_man_road/index.php

High School Song Contest

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/19
Primary Language: English

This tradition was told in a setting where a group of friends were recounting old and weird high school traditions. This is one from a small private all-girl’s school in Ohio.

“So in my high school, my high school is like a school that’s all grades, like you can go there from the time you’re two years old to when you graduate, I just went when I went o high school, and in the highs school there’s this thing that each grade, so just the four, they do a thing called song contest and each grade will pick a theme and it’s super secretive and then you have to pick songs like four or five songs that fit that theme and change the lyrics to be about my high school Laurel, and you have to play your own music, so like you can’t play a stereo, you have to get your own music and your own dances, and then the alumni will vote on the best and which celebrates Laurel the most, and it’s this whole thing because my school’s been around since 1896 so there’s some very old alumni, and like, they’re like, conspiracies that like you have to pick older songs cause the old people aren’t going to know, and last year the juniors did beyonce and it was good like super good, but they didn’t win because basically because they chose too new of the artists or something like that, and there’s another conspiracy that like if the seniors don’t win it’s like a riot, and I guess that like once the seniors didn’t win and all their rich parents were like we’re defunding, we’re taking back our loans and all that, but like the seniors haven’t won a few times, like we didn’t win when we were seniors and we were fine, there was some people though who made it a big thing because they have ties to alumni and all that”

Analysis:

It’s clear to see that the reasoning behind the rumours around the song contest – it would mean more chances to win. However, it is interesting about the seniors needing to win, because it would seem that perhaps it would ENSURE that the senior class would win. However, as the informant noted, her class did not win and there were no repercussions.

Persian Dance Contest

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: hebrew

 

Persian Dance Contest

Holiday/Tradition

 

As part of the Persian New Year, my informant’s Jewish school held a Persian Dance Contest. My informant described it in the following transcript of our interview:

 

“Every year during the Persian New Year, a holiday which honors the Jews of Persia, we have a Persian dance contest. Any student, pretty much everybody, would take part in these dances. The winners got prizes, like gift cards. Judges were usually parents that were from Persia. Everybody loved the holiday: dancing felt silly and fun, and it was a good break from the usual school day.”

The Persian Dance contest links all of the students to a heritage only 40% have. Sharing the dances and emphasizing the authenticity (through the “actual” Persian judges”), the students become involved in a different culture and identity, raising awareness of other cultures and solidifying the group as a whole.