Among Other Things: Time to resurrect the Pit Spit Splat?

By Paul Fugleberg

I was pleased to read in last week’s Leader that the Polson Business Community’s three special promotions are going to include a Cherry Festival in July.

The announcement brings back memories of the Great Cherry Pit Spit Splat that was part of the cherry festivals in 1982-1987.

Hopefully, the planners will consider resurrecting that portion of the event along with the hilarious cherry pit spit. One year it even attracted a crew from ABC’s Wide World of Sports television program.

One block of Main Street was closed off to traffic and designated as the “Championship Cherry Pit Spit Spitting Pit.”

Within the pit spit spitting pit, competition would pit top pit spitters in several pit spitting categories: Short, middle and long range pit spitting; trick spit spitting, and a spit spitting spectacular specifically based on accuracy.

In the latter event, a shiny brass spittoon was the target and placed about 10 feet away from the pit spit spitting line. Challenge was to spot-spit pit spits into the spittoon. Grand champion would win a trophy, a 20-pound lug of cherries (with pits) and the spit pit spot-spit spittoon into which they had spat pits.

In case of a tie, the winner would be determined by reciting the following tongue twister in the fastest time with the fewest mistakes:

“How many cherry pits could Charley, the champion cherry spit spitter spit if Charley could spit pits? Twice as many if he’d split pits and spit split pits. If he didn’t split pits to spit and spat unsplit pits, he’d only spit half as many pits had he split pits to spit and spat those split pits.”

A word of caution: It would be well to start training the emcee now so he could recite the tie-breaker rule without become tang-tongueled.

There were a few more rules, but my computer keyboard at this point has developed sticky letters, particularly the a, e, i, o, u. Must be suffering from vowel obstruction.