Time Square’s lighted ball gets all the press, but other cities across America drop all kinds of things at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Some very strange things!
Objects
Six-foot-tall conch shell (Key West, Florida)
Indy race car (Indianapolis, Indiana)
Giant guitars (Niagara Falls, New York; Memphis, Tennessee; and Nashville, Tennessee)
Ten-foot Crayola crayon (Easton, Pennsylvania)
Giant Bayer aspirin tablet (Myerstown, Pennsylvania)
Chunk of coal is dropped, turning into a diamond at the bottom (Shamokin, Pennsylvania and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania)
Ping pong balls (Strasburg, Pennsylvania)
800-pound beach ball (Panama City, Florida)
Food
Giant peach (Atlanta, Georgia)
Giant doughnut (Hagerstown, Maryland)
Giant pickle (Mount Olive, North Carolina)
Giant Sausage (Elmore, Ohio)
100-pound yellow illuminated Peep (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania)
Giant Dove chocolate bar (Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania)
Giant Hershey kiss (Hershey, Pennsylvania)
100-pound stick of bologna (Lebanon, Pennsylvania)
80-pound cheese (Plymouth, Wisconsin)
Car-sized potato (Boise, Idaho).
Animals
“Spencer,” the stuffed opossum (Tallapoosa, Georgia)
Giant sardine (Eastport, Maine)
Red lobster (Easton, Maryland)
Eight-foot long, five-foot high duck (Havre de Grace, Maryland)
“Marshall P. Muskrat” in a top hat and bow tie (Princess Anne, Maryland)
Live opossum in a Plexiglass pyramid (Brasstown, North Carolina)
“Captain Wylie Walleye” (Port Clinton, Ohio)
A pig is “flown,” not dropped (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Stuffed beaver (Beavertown, Pennsylvania)
Stuffed goat (Falmouth, Pennsylvania)
Hog (Fayetteville, Arkansas)
Real, but dead carp weighing up to 30 pounds (Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin)
People
And, each year, drag queen Gary “Sushi” Marion, is lowered in a giant ruby slipper (Key West, Florida)
This, of course, got me thinking of ways to put Corn Borer, Indiana, on the map. I’m proposing that Prairie Propane drop a giant ear of corn off the grain elevator. Or maybe not!
Regardless of what drops near you, have a wonderful—and safe—New Year!
Copyright © 2015 James N. Watkins