Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

June Pea Festival Planned

Ricky Waller fine tunes his racing garden tiller, Digger II, which in 1994 tilled 200 feet in 7.94 seconds, still the world record.

Looking for a new, unusual hobby? Or just need those weeds in that backyard tilled up -- fast?

There are some folks in Emerson, who would love to talk to you.

Emerson, population 317, located in Columbia County, about 12 miles south of Magnolia and five miles north of the Louisiana state line, is the home of the Purplehull Pea Festival and its feature event, the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race.

"It's a bunch of folks who bring their souped-up garden tillers to the festival and race them," said Bill Dailey, spokesman for the festival, which has been held in Emerson on the last Saturday in June every year since 1990. This year's festival and tiller race will be June 28.

In the beginning, the local residents decided holding a festival which would shine light on the purplehull pea, a delicacy of many backyard gardens of the area, would be an appropriate thing to do. As somewhat of a lark, a garden tiller race was added.

The World Championship Rotary Tiller Race has become considerably more.

It's garnered nationwide attention from newspapers and magazines, plus radio progams such as John Madden's Sports Calendar, television programs on TNN, CNN, and even a few seconds of video on NBC's Today Show.

All this is heady stuff for Emerson residents, previously unaccustomed to outside attention of any kind. But the lack of universal acceptance of garden tiller racing is causing some concern.

"So far we've had people from only three states and one foreign country enter," says Dailey. "We'd love to have folks from all over. We need to spread the word a little bit, evangelize about tiller racing, I guess."

While a tent revival full of garden tillers being converted is still an uncommon scene in the south Arkansas community, there are serious efforts being made to carry the sport to all the world, to spread the "good news" of garden tiller racing.

So, how does one become anointed into the tiller racing life?

Ricky Waller of Emerson is a three-time world champion garden tiller racer. His tiller, Digger II, set the current world record in 1994, by tilling the standard 200-foot tiller track in 7.94 seconds. That's an average speed of over 17 miles-per-hour. And Waller has some advice for propsective tiller racers.

"Start out light," he says. "Don't try to build something heavy and real powerful."

Waller's tiller is a 32-year old modified Merry tiller, outfitted with a go-cart alcohol burning engine bristling with chrome, and the remainder painted bright green and orange with insignia declaring the name of the tiller and its owner. More than just a racing tiller, it's a show tiller.

Waller also recommends modifying an existing tiller rather than buidling one from scratch. "It's cheaper to do," he says.

But a built-from-scratch, home-brewed racing tiller was exactly what Steve Grant of Brister had in mind in 1994. He took a 75-horsepower Suzuki 400 motorcylce engine and build a tiler around it. He called it Wild Thing, a name which soon proved to be appropriate.

In the race that year, Grant chose Marty Starr, a local resident with rodeo experience, to race Wild Thing. Starr wrestled with the tiller down the track, alternating between having periods of good speed and episodes in which Wild Thing appeared to want to stop and catapult Starr overhead.

About three-quarters of the way down the track, Starr, gripping the handle bars, went face down into the dirt, and Wild Thing came to an abrupt halt.

Grant now compares it to a learning experience. "Kind of being the first one we ever done, it was kind of just a trial and error, to see what we could come up with," he says.

Besides excessive power, Grant also concedes another problem with Wild Thing was its rotating blades, known in tiller-talk as "tines." They were too big.

"We put paddles on there to try to give us some traction, and of course we end up getting too much traction," says Grant.

"You can overdo it," says commissioner of tiller racing, Ernie Emerson. "That's where I'd say a little common sense comes into play. You need to look at something and figure out all the angles on it."

Emerson, a distant relative of Reuben Emerson, founder of the town of Emerson, was given the title of commissioner and chairman of the World Tiller Racing Federation by the Purplehull Pea Festival committee in 1993, after earlier controversies regarding the tiller race convinced the committee it needed a separate, semi-autonomous body to hanndle such matters.

Prize money? You bet. Waller, winner of the modified division of the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race last year, won $1,000, though, according to Emerson, it may be reduced sightly in 1997, possibly to $800.

If a gardener doesn't feel inclined to take their tiller to the chopping block for modification, there is a stock tiller division of the race, in both men and women's classes, plus a junior tiller division, with lesser prize money for each.

For further information, write Tiller Race, P.O. Box 1, Emerson, AR 71740, or call the commissioner of tiller racing, Ernie Emerson, at (870) 547-2544. The Purplehull Pea Festival, an all day event, will be Saturday, June 28, on the grounds of Emerson High School. And the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race begins at 6:30 p.m.