Word: snyders
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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While politicians, who know a good stump when they see one, exhort the all-white crowd and country bands pick and sing, the spitters gather around tobacco manufacturers' displays on Billy John's log-cabin porch to discuss their craft. Don Snyder, 22, the Mississippi State University student who has held the distance crown for two years, explains that it takes time "to get your juice right. It can't be too thick or too thin. You've got to just chew for about an hour and not drink or eat anything and get your mouth...
...Snyder is strictly a competitive chewer; he started at 17 when he first heard about the contest, and has been out to win from the beginning. He wears boots exactly twelve inches long, "so I can measure my practice spits without a tape." For a month before a big contest, he spits for about two hours a day, fixing his eyes, his head, his entire body on target before he lets fly a practice shot. Unlike others, he uses hardly any body thrust...
...known as "the keeper of the cuspidor," cautions: "No licorice or other foreign matter mixed in." One by one the spitters toe the line, legs spread. They draw two fingers to the ends of their mouths, rock back like drawn bowstrings and let fly toward a distant spittoon. Don Snyder reaches the finals but loses the accuracy contest to Hulon Craft, a distant nephew of old George. Hulon comes to within 1 ½ inches of a spittoon 15 feet away...
Screaming boys line the spitting range, older folks crowd up in folding aluminum chairs, and the bleachers sag under the weight of several hundred cheek-to-jowl spectators as Don Snyder begins his assault on the distance crown. The 22 entrants spew down the range. There are three rounds, and Snyder on his first try comes to within a foot of George Craft's 13-year-old record. On the second round he narrows the difference to less than two inches. Then Snyder arches his last shot 25 ft. 10 in. for a new world's record...
...folks have viewed a prodigious feat and they are ecstatic. "I don't see how anybody'll ever catch him unless he slips up," says George Craft. But against the day that Snyder is the sport's grand old man, Timmy Tullos, aged nine and for two years a chewer, is toeing the line with the men and firing away...