A Very Strange Start - Gnome-out Kickoff

(gp: February 1, 2010)

It was probably appropriate that there was an odd start to an odd event.

With all the crowds and the all the hullabaloo, with strange contestants arriving at odd moments or appearing miraculously, with all the convroversy it's contestants have caused, it should not have been as big of a shock as it was that the Great Gnome-out Executive Committee declared a "Gmedia blackout" and canceled the opening day festivities on the day of the start of the Event.

"We understand your surprise" explained Richard Heade, the senior committee member on hand at the time. "But given a number of the issues we have encountered this year, the committee voted to try and slow down some of the notoriety the event is generating."

The announcement also took the crowds which had gathered in the pre-dawn morning waiting for the usual fertilizer and used sneaker handouts that mark the beginning of past Gnome-outs by surprise as well. Suspecting that this was only a cost-saving maneuver on the event committee's part, the crowd's mood turned restive quickly.

"How'm I supposed to get the garden to go wi' no fertilizer?" complained Howard D. Doody, a slightly stooped old man with stiff joints. " Them's garden critters will be wanting to get inter the house agin if the garden's no good. An' I ain't got no mo' shoes ta heave at them ter quiet 'em down either. Leave it ter ol' Dick Heade to screw this up."

A potential uprising was averted by quick thinking on the part of Mrs. Grizwald, one on the homeowners who are hosting this year's Gnome-out, when she began shoveling pitchfork fulls of old horse manure at the crowd.

"Here's your fertilizer!" she yelled.

Whether or not this is what the crowd had in mind, it apparently did the trick as the crowd dissipated quickly at that point.

So despite this day which has gone rather differently, the Great Gnome-out is truly underway with it's nine contestants snugly out on the ice. The Event committee is still working the registrations of the last entrants, but this reporter is happy to report that the Gnome Press International has the exclusive pictures and stories of these contestants already, and will be bringing you these over the next several days.

Gerald Putzny for Gnome Press International.