East Davis Street in Luling is lined with low-slung brick mom-and-pop shops. One, a cafe, is actually called “Mom’s Front Porch”. But the road deviates from a classic Main Street feel with its centerpiece: a massive tin-roofed pavilion topped with an ornate green sculpture, marking it as the home of the Central Texas town’s longrunning “Watermelon Thump” festival.
The pavilion is a permanent fixture; in fact, the nonprofit that runs the Thump owns a good portion of the street. The festival takes place the last full weekend of June, and the street becomes a beacon for watermelon lovers. Light poles, trash cans, storefront windows— anything that can be adorned with watermelons surely will be. Luling’s population is under 6,000, but the annual event—with carnival rides, contests, and live music—draws about 30,000 visitors.
It’s a lot for first-time attendees, or even casual melon enthusiasts, to take in. Nicole Smith, photographer and writer for thelocal weekly Luling Newsboy & Signal, offers to guide me through the weekend. “I will be here, needless to say, because this is the thing in town,” she tells me. “No other news can happen.”
Industrial fans line the pavilion to beat back the 5-o’clock heat ahead of the opening ceremonies: the watermelon weigh-in and, of course, the Watermelon Thump Queen’s coronation. In front, this year’s entries in the growing competition line the stage. The imposing melons will be auctioned off the next day, proceeds going to the growers and scholarships for local high schoolers. I’m told the all-time auction record was around $35,000 for a single fruit.
The official weight announcer—who’s been doing the job for 44 years—stands onstage behind a folding table, as growers hoist melons onto the scale. Pregnant seconds pass as the scale calibrates, then the official weight is announced.
The second melon in line is a commanding fruit I feel compelled to call The Big One. It hasn’t hit the scale yet, but it’s clearly the largest of the bunch. As its grower lifts it to the scale, someone in the crowd shouts, “Don’t drop it!” The Thump has an established policy for dropped melons: If it makes it through the door, it’s entered into the contest; with witnesses, festival staff weigh the dropped melon’s remains, and the result goes into the record books. One grower suffered that fate this year: His knee gave out earlier that day, and he and his 105-pound watermelon hit the ground.
The Big One, unscathed, weighs in at 125.1 pounds. It was grown by Paul Mikesh, co-owner of an eponymous fruit and vegetable company, over the course of 130 days.
Sporting a well-worn Mikesh Produce hat, he says he learned the secret to growing super-sized watermelons from his late friend, who was tight-lipped about the technique with everyone but him. In the glow of his second Grand Championship win, Mikesh shares the secret: Prune all but one fruit off of each vine. This way, each vine can focus its resources on one melon. Even then, a lot can go wrong.
This year, only seven growers entered the contest. In years past, the Thump had so many growers they had to limit the auction to the top 15. You have a lot of enemies as a melon grower: wild hogs, deer, too much rain, too little rain. “Everything’s against you,” says Bubba Damon, a Watermelon Thump board member. Many local growers have turned to less-fickle crops or livestock.
Bubba is a realist, but he’s also a devotee. He grew up working in watermelon patches. His wife and daughter, both former Watermelon Thump Queens, are bustling around the adjacent pavilion preparing for this year’s coronation as we talk.
Next door, more than 100 seats face a stage and flank an elevated runway. Bleachers line the perimeter, but even those overflow seats aren’t enough, and spectators spill into the adjacent pavilion, eager to see which Luling high schooler will be Queen. The title comes with a crown, a sash, and a time commitment: The winner will spend the next year traveling to various festivals around Texas. The 2023 queen reportedly traveled over 4,000 miles during her reign.
Before this year’s winner—voted in by the 2,546 Luling residents who cast ballots—is announced, the outgoing queen speaks. She recalls talking with her grandfather after winning in 2023. He was brought to tears, she says, because when he immigrated to the United States, “He never would have imagined his granddaughter becoming queen to represent a whole town.”
The Watermelon Thump lets residents take time to appreciate the fruits of their work. There are many winners during the weekend: the Grand Champion grower, the Queen, the First Place Seed Spitter, the red-faced Watermelon Eating Contest winner. Whether they wear a dirt-stained ball cap or a faux-diamond tiara, they hold their heads high.
