Riding bacon into the homestretch
The butts of the jokes were the celebrities who hammed it up for charity at the Pig Derby.
By BETH N. GRAY
Published April 23, 2005
BROOKSVILLE - The first Celebrity Scholarship Swine Time Pig Derby at the county fair was reaching climax at 8 p.m. Thursday.
Rick Ahrens, vocational agriculture instructor at Hernando High, had promised to wear a dress in the event if donors tallied $500 in his name for the scholarship fund.
"They'll never make it," he pooh-poohed confidently.
"We'll make sure he gets it if we have to chip in ourselves," whispered Debbie Brand, an organizer of the race sponsored by FFA alumni associations at Hernando and Central high schools.
Minutes before Ahrens was to clop into his racing slot, pig poised to run against an entry driven by Mike Walker, treasurer Michele King of Central alumni, dashed to the starting gate, waving overhead a giant cup of money.
"We made it, $500!" she yelled to a thunderous crowd.
Ahrens disappeared momentarily behind the bleachers in the livestock arena at the Hernando County Fair and Youth Livestock Show. He reappeared in a flowered and flowing red outfit.
While Ahrens wouldn't disclose his weight, he suggested Omar the Tentmaker designed the garb. "My weight equals my IQ," he joked. His legs were bare above high-top leather barn-slogging shoes. He also wore a lopsided white wig done up in pink plastic rollers.
Students, former students and even those in the crowd who weren't acquainted with the popular teacher hooted, cheered and applauded.
Walker, director of parks and recreation for Brooksville, showed almost equal goodwill as he took to the track in a rose-colored dress worn over jeans.
When the 14 celebrity competitors were lassoed into the contest, they weren't told they'd have to don costumes.
"We'll let them laugh and make fun of us, as long as they don't get too carried away," contestant Jayne Batten, president of the Hernando alums, said as she settled a pink ruffled crown trailing feathers on her head and strung a festival of beads around her neck. She also wore a pair of pink cowgirl boots to coordinate the outfit.
"The whole goal is to make us look ridiculous," joked veterinarian Doug Davenport. "I don't mind it at all. It's for the kids."
But Davenport came to the racetrack with some trepidation.
"Most animals don't like me. I'm the vet," he said. "I've worked on them, poked 'em, done some other things, but never showed (a pig)."
When Davenport's racer balked at one of the straw bales, he delivered a well-placed poke in the porker's posterior that sent the pig sailing over the obstacle. The crowd roared with laughter.
None of the other pig drivers had hands-on experience, but several of them have teens in FFA who raise hogs.
"My daughter showed pigs," Batten said. "I watched her."
Tom Varn III, assistant principal at Hernando High, said he'd been working out all week, running in his neighborhood to get in shape.
"I've never done anything that hard," Varn said, as he huffed back to the ending gate, face glistening with sweat. Varn faced good-natured threats of disqualification when starters discovered a stalk of celery in his pocket, an attempt to tempt the pig.
After the starting gates open, contestants drive their pigs through a maze of straw bales, stop midway to grab a paper garland to wear around their neck, blow a horn, then round the course through a pair of hula hoops, put on oversized sunglasses, dash back to the starting gate and slam it shut before the stop watch records their time.
The gate and his failure to heed the runner's admonition, "never look back,' caused Varn's downfall.
Varn was comfortably ahead of Hernando High principal Betty Harper when his pig dashed back into the starting chute. But Varn failed to close the gate as he looked back to see where his competition was, and his pig scooted out and back down the course. Harper won the heat.
Matt Malory's costume contributed to his defeat. He worn a Hawaiian grass skirt over jeans. "It's trying to eat me," Mallory said loudly, as his four-legged companion munched away.
Beating him was ferrier Jason Biggs, who wore a purple tutu over jeans and waved a silver foil pinwheel.
The Ahrens-Walker race couldn't have been closer: Ahrens at 41 seconds, Walker at 42 seconds. The crowd of more than 200 spectators hollered for a rematch.
The competitors took deep breaths and prepared to run again, wielding sponge "noodles" to direct their beasts. Both hogs started out of their gates backward. Neck and neck again, until Ahrens forgot to pick up the sunglasses and had to run back. Result: Walker 52 seconds; Ahrens 1 minute 6 seconds.
A call to the audience for volunteers produced a winner. 4-H parent Ed Taselski challenged county farm extension agent Stacy Strickland to a duel. Strickland had been calling the races on the microphone. Taselski turned in a time of 38 seconds to Strickland's 41.
Watching raptly, and cheering on any Central High representatives were Millie Strmensky of Brooksville and her 4-year-old granddaughter, Dallas Strmensky.
Dallas's mother, Amanda, had begged her parents, Millie and Philip Strmensky, to allow her to raise a pig when she enrolled at Central High. But the family lived in suburban Spring Hill, with no facilities for raising livestock. Amanda had a friend who offered to keep the hog at her Brooksville farm. So in her junior year, Amanda raised another hog. As a senior in 2000, she added a steer project to her pig keeping.
While studying to become a veterinary technician, Amanda was killed in an automobile accident in 2002. She was a single mother at the time and had been bringing Dallas to the fair since the youngster was five months old. The family has kept up the tradition.
"We haven't missed one (fair)," said Millie Strmensky. "She loves it."
Back inside the show ring at the fair, alumni treasurer King announced the first pig derby raised more than $1,000 for the scholarship fund, to be shared equally by the Hernando and Central FFA chapters.
"It was more than expected," King said.