The Messiness of Victory, the Sweetness of Defeat

We wonder why they even called them pie eating contests.

The idea was supposedly to eat half a blueberry pie with your hands behind your back.

I doubt if the winners ate a single berry.

You just kind of belly flopped into the pie tin, rubbed it at all over your body, and hoped to come up a winner. It seems the judges didn’t count what you ate, just whose pie tin came up cleanest.

Of course, the losers, kinder, gentler kids, could always nibble away, and take the rest home for sweet dessert.

Was this the beginning of the baby boomer generation’s lifetime of excess and greed for success at any cost? Is this why the Boomers grew up fat?

Or was it just a healthy yearning for old time values of July Fourth meets and mom’s blueberry pie?

We report, you decide.

Here they are: the contestants and victor of the 1955 Saltaire pie eating contest.
.
All pictures copyright the Stillgebauer Archives