About human activities

Perhaps a new world record was set last weekend in Polson. The folks down there seem to love odd athletic competition. This spring’s big event was a rock-skipping championship and I eagerly await results this week.

Meanwhile, I’ve gone to the files for one of the bigger contests Polson had in the past, along with an important, but unrelated sex report.

From July 22, 1987:

Professor Eli Coleman at the University of Minnesota says his research shows there are tens of thousands of people out there who crave sex so much they will jeopardize their jobs, reputations, and families, even risk their lives, to get a passionate fix. The often uncontrollable drive is said to be linked to psychological factors as much as physical. Another professor working on a cure thinks at least one out of 12 Americans may be adversely affected by the ailment of compulsive purple passion. He did not mention anyone in particular, including presidential candidates.

At a recent conference in Minneapolis, attended by over 250 sexologists and mental health experts, Dr. Coleman reported that researchers are working on a program for treating sex addiction. It may be the first of its kind and already has established a “Sexaholic Anonymous” organization for those needing help.

I couldn’t help wondering how big the guy is who keeps order at meetings. We can just imagine him banging the gavel and yelling, “You people in the back there. We’ll get to you in a minute, so just keep your pants on.” We were discussing this interesting new concept over coffee last Thursday, where at least two men showed passing interest. In a curious whisper I asked one of them if he thought he had the disease. He replied, “No, I’m probably average. I just wish those research people would spend less time on a cure and more on spreading it to wives.”

So much for the do-gooder clippings.

Taking a page from the Oral Roberts book on achieving your goals in life, 23-year-old Gary Burrows called on the Lord to “do something about the wind,” then he spit a wad of tobacco 24 feet 11.5 inches to win this year’s championship at the 33rd National Tobacco Spitting Contest. The winning wad fell way under the world record of 33 feet 7.5 inches held by “Faucet Man” Barber and duly recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records; but the 3,500 people gathered at Billy John Crumpton’s farm near Raleigh, Mississippi cheered loud and long. Anthony Rolan, 18, became the first rookie in history to win the accuracy competition, and gave credit for his three bullseyes to a “natural born ability.”

I don’t normally follow the activities of the National Tobacco Spitting Association as closely as I do those of the National Baseball League, but I bring this subject up after studying the results of the cherry-spitting contests held last weekend in Polson. The winning spit-pit traveled 26 feet 9 inches, which seems quite a distance in a sport that is fairly new.

Perhaps there is a great future in promoting a spit-off between the cherry pit and the tobacco juice launchers. Under current rules, cherry pit spitters are judged in two categories, distance and style, whereas the tobacco folks go for distance and accuracy.

Who knows? Down the road sometime, with proper promotion and a greater public acceptance of spitting as a big time sport, we could have an obscure Polson pit popper or a Hungry Horse huckleberry hocker bringing home the Olympic gold.

Just makes your spine tingle, doesn’t it?

G. George Ostrom is an award-winning columnist. He lives in Kalispell.