Milton was lean and long, roughly the size of a man’s hand, and all afternoon we kept him in an inch of pond water at the bottom of a plastic, lidded, 2-pint barbecue bucket with a dime-sized hole in the top for air. I spent half the day in paternal worry— Was he cool enough? Was he hungry? Was he thirsty? Was he angry? Was he pumped up? Was he still alive?—and so I would peek through the hole to see Milton squatting there, wide-eyed and patient and surely ready to set the new state record at the 2011 Governor’s Frog Jump Competition.
We bought him for $10 from a clan of country boys that advertised their business by draping—over the hood of their truck—a cardboard sign with green-print lettering that simply read, “Frogs For Sale.” I was in the high festival spirit, asking them where they’d caught the frogs, but all I could get in response was a slow, reticent, frog-like belch: “Out…of...ponds.”
There is, I would learn later, an important and noticeable difference between a pond bullfrog and a North Edisto River bullfrog, with the latter being leaner and darker. But they promised me I’d chosen well—the same size and sprightly legs that the oldest man usually “saved for his granddaughters.” I named him Milton, after the English poet.
So we—me, Milton, and my girlfriend Lee, who had brought along a camera and a remarkable sense of resilience—waited in line for a half hour in order to pay the $5 entry fee. The sun was just beginning to burn off the early cloud cover, making the air heavy with late April heat, and, as usual at any festival, the crowd was proving to be more intriguing than the event. Everyone had frogs on their bodies (frog earrings, frog necklaces, frog T-shirts, hands waving frog flags and frog banners) and frogs on their minds. One woman told me not to use salt when cooking frog legs because the sodium will activate the muscles and the legs will jump right out of the frying pan.
Soon enough, after filling out the paperwork (which included questions like “Name of Trainer” and “Trainer’s Hometown”), we registered Milton as the 121st bullfrog in the competition, a Springfield tradition that has remarkably persevered into its fourth decade.
The prize was $750 and the right to represent South Carolina in Calaveras County, Calif. For who can compete in frog-jumping without thinking of Mark Twain’s seminal 1865 short story “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”—one of the first truly American stories? It is because of this famous tale that the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee began in 1928.
Now the fair hosts 50,000 visitors each spring, a kind of national championship of frog-jumping. Springfield is the state championship of frog-jumping, and it is not hard to envision little regional, backyard contests all over the state.
A frog jump may not be exactly what you envision. Before I’d done any research, I’d pictured racing lanes, set off by cardboard, on a dirt floor in the kind of open-air structure that you would see at a county fair. But the goal of frog jumping is not crossing the finish line first. Frog-jumping is all about distance.
At the Springfield frog jump, when it is your turn, you step onto a grassy, fenced off, rectangular yard that the town has obviously constructed for the contest. On three sides of the fence are wooden bleachers, where spectators sit casually cross-legged, gossiping, enjoying the deep-fried decadence, oohing and aahing, perhaps placing a few $5 side bets.
You set your bullfrog on a small, rubber lily pad. You cannot touch the frog or the pad. You will hear this repeated by the lanky emcee, who walks around and calls out on his cordless microphone, “Don’t touch the frog. Don’t touch the pad. Don’t touch the pad. Don’t touch the frog.”
You can, however, yell at the frog. You can throw grass on the frog. You can pour water on the frog. You can blow on the frog.
And, indeed, anyone you ask will offer some insider advice. The clerk at Kent’s Corner, where we bought three tall cans of Coors Light, told us that you have to keep the frogs in a dark closet for a month before you bring them out. The point, she said, was that the light releases the endorphins, which makes the frogs jump.
The woman who sold us a deep-fried Twinkie told us to put a little hot sauce on Milton’s butt. The man at the boiled peanut stand told us to feed Milton one of his Cajun peanuts. A man standing next to me said you had to hold the frog underwater until it starts kicking, and then you bring it out with its legs already pumping.
And while watching the 120 frogs that came before us (with names like Spongebob, Frogger and Hopper), we saw the whole gamut of strategy: wiping the frog off with a towel, pulling on the frog’s legs, kissing the frog, whispering into the frog’s ear, shaking the frog like a locked doorknob.
As soon as the frog is placed on the lily pad, it has 30 seconds to jump. The rules allow for the frog to jump three times, including what the emcee repeatedly calls “stutter steps,” before the Jump Master, trailing with a rollout tape measure, marks the spot of landing and records it on the registration papers. Some frogs leap immediately. Some don’t budge. Most, after an initial period of hesitation, take off for a modest 5 to 10 yards.
This is not to say, however, that the frog simply stops after three jumps. One of the sheer pleasures of the contest occurs when the frog eludes the young frog-catchers—a gang of athletic 12-year-olds—and wriggles through the fence and into the stands, where the crowd squeals and scatters as if from a fire.
When this happens, the emcee will try to calm everybody down and remind them that, “It is only a frog, and we don’t want anybody going to the hospital over a little old frog, now do we?” Nevertheless, it happens every fifth frog or so, and each time it produces the same squeals of delightful fear, the same scrambling of the boys under the bleachers.
Around 4:30 in the afternoon, after the emcee had already confessed his fatigue and thus been brought a plate of hot fries and a bottle of water, the registration reached triple digits. This meant that Lee, Milton and I were supposed to line up along the gate and wait for our number to be called.
There was no real fanfare for our entrance, and by that point we were exhausted. Still, we had high hopes for Milton. Earlier he had startled me by jumping up and own in his bucket, as if he were ready to take us all the way to California, and I was sure that I had picked an excellent frog.
The emcee announced our names. I took Milton out of the bucket. It was the first time I had held him all day. I squeezed him as tightly as one might squeeze a tennis all before a serve. I shook him a little bit. Lee patted down his legs with a leftover Subway napkin. I put him on the lily pad.
He didn’t budge.
I stomped. I yelled. I threw grass. I spit. I prayed. I did all of those things twice.
And still he didn’t budge, as if, reminiscent of Twain’s story, someone had sneaked a teaspoon of quail shot into his mouth while we were busy munching on a corndog.
Time was called, and it was a sad mixture of relief and shame. With the heat and the eyes of the crowd bearing down on me, I felt truly like an outsider. Why hadn’t I stretched his legs a little like I’d seen the young boy do on YouTube? Was Milton simply as tired as we were?
And so we put Milton back in the bucket and shuffled to the car, unsure about what we would do with this bullfrog that, although he had disappointed us, we loved like a child. Perhaps we could keep him in my mother’s koi pond in Columbia.
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Get There
The Governor’s Frog Jump Contest takes place every year on the Saturday before Easter in the town of Springfield. For more information call (803) 258-3152 or visit springfieldsc.us/governor.htm.