Festivals celebrate N.C. watermelons

This is the sixth installment of our "Open Road" summer series, which looks at unusual spots across the state. Look for it every Tuesday.

Hardly anything is more refreshing in the thick of a stifling Southern summer than sinking your teeth and face into a grin-shaped wedge of ice-cold watermelon.

First there's that cool burst of sticky sweetness.

Then comes the rush of sweet memories from summers past - the outlandish seed-spitting contests, the crazy rind carvings, the soothing murmur of front-porch conversations barely audible over the hum of air conditioners, and the cool kiss of soft grass on bare feet that haven't squeezed into shoes since the last day of school.

In North Carolina, which ranks seventh nationally in watermelon production, three festivals are planned in the coming weeks to celebrate the fleshy red fruit ensconced in rinds of striped green, yellow and sometimes white.

In the small towns of Fair Bluff, Murfreesboro and Winterville, devotees of the summer staple will gather for pageantry, contests, samplings, rind-carvings and plain old-fashioned fun. They'll crown watermelon queens and coronate champion growers of notonly the best-shaped fruit but the sweetest and best all-round.

"We just have a good time," saidJudy Enzor, one of the organizers of the Fair Bluff event.

Each festival has a different flavor. The Fair Bluff event is rich in tradition and pageantry, while Murfreesboro is all about family fun. Winterville's is a big music festival, with bands of some renown drawing an audience from nearby East Carolina University.

It started with a bet

The Fair Bluff festival, the earliest of the state's big three, is rooted in a backyard bet that transpired more than three decades ago.

A.J. Worley and Monroe Enzor, two semiretired farmers who died within a week of each other in 1991, started growing watermelons as a hobby in the late 1970s.

Enzor got the friendly competition going when he bought some watermelon seeds from a fruit stand near Ocean Isle Beach and planted them to see what would sprout. One of the fruits of his labor weighed 117 pounds - large, though not record-breaking large.

Worley, never one to back away from a challenge, sought seeds of his own and settled on a batch from anArkansas magazine.

The race was on for bragging rights. Worley eventually bested Enzor with a watermelon that tipped the scales at 120 pounds.

As the years went on, the men started toting their prized melons on the beds of their pickup trucks into the small river-walk town on the Lumber River where watermelon patches have signs telling customers to pay on the honor system. Not only did the men draw a crowd for the big weigh-ins, but they also spread enthusiasm for the fruit and its snaking vine that most likely originated centuries ago in southern Africa.

Soon people started to come from outside Fair Bluff to take part, and the festival and Fair Bluff Watermelon Association were born. So much interest and intrigue swirled around the summer event that the festival fathers began to keep the location of their watermelon patches secret to prevent rural espionage, pranks and occasional thievery.

Cousins compete

Enzor and Worley descendants, and Fair Bluff is full of them, try to keep that playful spirit alive for the generations of festival-goers who missed out on knowing the two who started it all.

Judy Enzor and Chandler Worley say the current generation of watermelon growers try to hide their prize fruit in the middle of the patch where a competitor, friendly or not, distant family or no kin at all, might have difficulty getting a peek.

This year, the Fair Bluff festival's 25th anniversary, the competition has extended across the border to South Carolina, where Woody Strickland, a Worley cousin, is doing a bit of smack-talking about the tasty, sizable watermelons he is growing south of the state line.

Robert Worley, who has a string of victories to his name, is not worried about losing bragging rights to his cousin from another state.

In the end, the Worleys and Enzors say, everybody wins.

Celebrate marketing

Organizers of other festivals reap the rewards of satisfied customers looking for one more summer celebration of the watermelon.

And growers such as Michael Bunch, a watermelon farmer in Murfreesboro who distributes most of the 15-million pounds of fruit to chain stores up and down the East Coast and as far west as Chicago, say the activities bring recognition to a summer fruit that now is in huge demand year 'round across the country.

"Anytime you can get some publicity about watermelons ... it's good is all I can tell you," Bunch said.