Summer is the time for small town festivals, parades, and traditional American contests like pie-eating.  Every small town has a local pie eating champion. I live in a small town of 245 people, Spangle, Washington, about 12 miles South of Spokane on highway 195 towards Pullman, that has a Harvest festival and a Free American Music festival coming up this Saturday, and one of the highlights, along with many family and children oriented activities -  is the pie eating contest.

Our local pie eating champion is a guy named Alan who owns the local autobody shop here, but he doesn't look like a pie eating champion. He's a regular guy, maybe 6 feet and well under 200 pounds; kinda wiry looking, not the big beefy guy you would expect.

In fact, last year I went to meeting of the local Service club in preparation for last year's festival and there were several guys there talking about how they were going to win the pie-eating contest. These were big guys with names like Bubba and Junior, and they all looked like football linemen.

So this year I decided to try to help Alan find some hints on how to train for and win the pie-eating contest again, and of course I looked to the internet. There is a lot of information about pies on the internet; but there's not much on how to win a pie eating contest.

I found a folk music site with a poem about pie eating:

3 pieku by Justin Godey

Apple butter crust, cinammon sugar all gone,

I eat, bloated gut

Face full of apple, belly full of warm whiskey,  must swallow fast now

Six pounds of pie, a lot to regurgitate, now time for nauseau

Ok it's not a great poem but it is about eating pies .....

Then there's the Fat Bastard Pie Eating club of Scotland whose motto is:

"We like to eat pies from all over the country and wash them down with copious amounts of  beer/cider/wine/mad dog/various spirits."

They sound like a happy group of pie eaters ...

I even found a public radio site - WSHU - that had an article about professional eaters, and how they actually train for contests, and that they jog a lot. ...... I just  can't see a Rocky-like character waking up in the early morning, putting on sweats and going out jogging in the dark training for a pie eating contest .... I can see a guy with a big glass of milk next to his bed, and few pie slices at the ready.

I even came across the website of the International Federation of  Competitive Eating ...

They keep track of world eating records, such as the Japanese guy - 5'7" and 131 pounds - who broke the world's record last year by eating 50 Nathan's hotdogs and buns in 12 minutes. This year he ate 17.7 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes.

Another guy ate 152 jalapenos in 15 minutes. I wonder if he burst into flames afterwards.

The guy who holds the record for eating chicken wings calls himself "El Wingador", and the Oyster eating champion calls himself "Crazy legs".

So my best advice to my friend Alan is to call himself   El Diablo De Comer De Pastel - The Pie Eating Devil - to psyche out the competition.

So for some small town fun and a free American music festival come down to Spangle this Saturday - and remember - the pie eating contest is at noon ! I'll report on the winner next week.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Spokane Public Radio

National Public Radio Network

Broadcast on September 12th, 2002

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