Before we begin, I’ll give anyone who knows what worm gruntin’ is a shiny nickel. No cheating!
Well, the Worm Gruntin’ Festival, held in Sopchoppy, FL, has come and gone again. This year was my first. My wife saw a sign for it a year ago and determined that we must go, so we’d been ticking down the days till the second Saturday in April. To be completely honest, I had zero expectations going into it—worse than that perhaps, I clung to an my heritage as a sophisticated Tallahasseean and expected this to be a “redneck” event. I was happily proven wrong.
While the main premise of this event—hunting for worms by causing vibrations in the ground—seems rather redneck. My imagination takes me to the middle of the woods with a couple of overall wearing, tooth missing fisherman. The best part of the event was the day long contest to see which child under twelve could harvest the most worms. Parents would crouch down using a spike and a chisel: they would plant the spike into the ground and then grind the chisel back and forth on the spike to send vibrations through the earth. This mysteriously causes worms to emerge where giddy children would run around putting them into a pail. Interesting, for anyone who has seen either of the Dune movies, this process is eerily similar to the thumper that calls the great worms.
In addition to the actual worm gruntin’ (that apostrophe is critical to pronunciation of the word), there were a variety of vendors selling everything from jam to bowls to paintings to books. Speaking of books, I met a local author named David J. Mather who wrote a series of novels about the Florida panhandle called The Crescent Beach Series; if you’re interested in that sort of things, you can find his novels on Amazon. I just started the first one, and I’m loving it!
The entire event, which must’ve been attended by almost 1000 people, had such a beautiful community feel. It was clear that everyone from the town of Sopchoppy had come to the festival, and that they had spent so many hours planning out such a wonderful festival. There were even candidates up for a local office that set up shop to talk to anyone and everyone about issues that they felt needed addressing.
It’s important to note the idea of ‘festival’ here. It’s a kind of celebration, but its not pure mania or revelry. Its an organized and well-thought out event where the members of the community can rejoice in their individual achievements. Therefore, it becomes not just an event for isolated members, but an avenue for encouragement, humor, and gratitude. These build up a community.
Then, you have the representation of the generations—the backbone of a flourishing community. You have grandparents, parents, and grandchildren all there celebrating this tradition of worm gruntin’! The tradition is also a skill and it naturally pulls people towards it, and so you have parents teaching their children about worm gruntin’ when they almost certainly learned the skill from their parents. That passing down of a tradition and a skill is a key unifying element of a community. There must be something passed down—something that connects the generations throughout time. Sopchoppy’s Worm Gruntin’ Festival displayed all of these things so beautifully! If you’re ever in the area around the second Saturday in April I highly recommend stopping by!
Notice in this picture how many different ages are represented!
One final thought on this glorious festival. Wendell Berry, the great Agrarian, says, “I believe that the community - in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.” Communities are built on festivals like this where people of all ages get together and enjoy the fruits of their labors regardless of whether it’s worms for fishing or jams for eating. The individuals make up of the wholeness and that wholeness, despite its imperfections, is the health that Berry speaks of.
The day ended by visiting another local place in Panacea, the next town over, called the Seineyard. It’s right on the water and serves delicious kong-fritters! It was an honor to participate in this wonderful local event, and I was certainly better off because of it.
Weekly Question:
Is there a local event near you that you love?