Popping a Tasty Tradition
Popping a Tasty Tradition
Visitors who arrive for the town’s annual Popcorn Days celebration have no need to ask for directions to the 104-year-old event; they just follow their nose to the free bags of freshly popped corn.
Popcorn Days, which was started in 1901 by North Loup businessmen as a way to celebrate the important local crop, is the longest, continuously running celebration in Nebraska.
For nearly 40 of those years, Chuck Lundstedt, a retired mechanic, has helped run the event’s natural gas-operated popping machine and used scoop shovels to mix giant batches of popcorn, butter and salt. "I just enjoy popping the corn," Lundstedt says. "Otherwise, I wouldn’t have helped out this long."
During the three-day event, scheduled Aug. 26 to 28 this year, between 20,000 and 30,000 bags of free popcorn are handed out to thousands of popcorn lovers, says Terry Christensen, last year’s Popcorn Days Association chairman. The celebration also features a talent show, music and dances, a carnival on Main Street and a huge parade.
"Back in the ‘50s, I remember being paid 10 cents an hour to sell ride tickets for the Merry-Go-Round during Popcorn Days," recalls longtime volunteer Darrel Cox, who now books musical acts for the dances and live performances.
Both the celebration and the crop are time-honored traditions in the fertile Loup River Valley, where farmers have grown popcorn since the 1890s. Chuck Zangger’s family has grown popcorn since his grandfather planted their first crop in 1924. In those days, North Loup was considered the Popcorn Center of the World.
"There’s still about 1,500 acres of popcorn grown around here," Zangger says of the North Loup area. "There are quite a few farmers who are second- or third-generation popcorn growers." Today, Nebraska is the nation’s top popcorn producing state, with more than 326 million pounds produced in 2003.
The weather and soil in the valley are perfect for growing popcorn, Zangger says. "In August, we have cool nights that allow the plant to covert sugars to starch," making for kernels that pops better. Zangger not only raises popcorn that he sells to processors for food, but he also developed his own hybrid popcorn seed that is planted by farmers around the country.
Having popcorn growers so close to home is good news for Mormac, the town’s only popcorn processor. The company, which donates the tasty treat for Popcorn Days, purchases popcorn from growers and distributes it to movie theaters and other food companies, which repackage it as microwave popcorn and products such as caramel corn and cheese corn.
A tradition for residents is to vote during the first day of the event for a Popcorn Days Queen. When North Loup celebrated its Popcorn Days centennial in 2001, most of the living former queens returned home for special recognition.
The 1966 queen, Susan Hudson Traudt, now lives in nearby Grand Island, Neb., but she brings her family back to the celebration every year.
For Traudt, it’s a family affair because her sister and her aunt also were queens. "It was an honor to be chosen," Traudt says, "being from a small town and picked by the people of North Loup."
Formerly, Popcorn Days was held mid-week. "Classes were called off at school so the kids could help with activities," Christensen says.
In recent years, officials turned the event into a Friday through Sunday festival, although classes still are dismissed on Friday to allow students to participate. "When you live in a small community, everyone pitches in together," Cox says. And no one goes home hungry.
Kernels of Popcorn Lore
- Americans consume 17 billion quarts of popped popcorn annually, or about 54 quarts per person.
- The oldest ears of popcorn were found in Bat Cave in New Mexico; they were 4,000 years old.
- The first electric popcorn popper was invented in 1907 and the first home popper was introduced in 1925.
- Popcorn was the first food to be cooked with microwave technology in the 1940s.
For more popcorn trivia, log on to www.popcorn.org.
Upload Your Own Stories, Photos and Videos
