See You At the Pickle »
Tomorrow night there will be a whole bunch of people gathered in Times Square to watch a fancy lighted ball drop from a tall tower. It will be cramped. It will be cold. It will be late. I can attest to these things because I've been there. It's been a few years, but I'm sure if anything, it's just going to be more cramped and perhaps even more cold. It probably will happen at pretty close to the same time, but since I'm even older, it might seem to be later.
Because of these reasons, and because I have made no plans to go to New York - and it's unlikely that I'll do so in the next 24 hours or so - it's not likely that I'll be there. It is very likely, however, that I will be elsewhere, watching another tradition unfold. This one is a bit closer to home, but that doesn't mean that it is any less interesting.
The Mt. Olive Pickle Company was started in 1926 in (you guessed it) Mt. Olive, North Carolina, and today packs over 90 million jars of processed and fresh pack pickles, relishes and peppers annually (via). There's a lot of pickling going on there. But I digress.
According to the History of the Pickle Drop, World War II bombardiers were so accurate, they could place their bombs in a pickle barrel (I suspect this is simply bragging, but who am I to judge?). By the 1950s, people in Chicago dropped pickles off of buildings and into barrels on the sidewalks to win a year of free pickles. I don't like pickles, but that's a game I can get into. Dropping pickles off of buildings? Talk about cool.
Jump to 1999, where the Mt. Olive Pickle Company held their first pickle drop. It went so well that they had another one in 2000, but they invited nearly ten times the people. The only change was making the drop happen at 7pm (which is midnight GMT). That's right in my strike zone, which is great because in 2001, they invited the public and 250 people showed up. In 2002, the pickle got lights and a marquee was added to track the countdown. By 2005, a thousand people showed up to see the New Pickle. Now, wouldn't you rather go to Mt. Olive than to New York? Me too.
