A Tomato War

The highlight of Grainger County, Tennessee's, annual Tomato Festival is the Tomato War. The rules are very similar to dodgeball, except tomatoes are thrown instead of balls.

Boxes of tomatoes are placed on and next to barrels near mid-field. At the starter's whistle, equal teams throw ripe tomatoes at the opposing team. Players are eliminated when hit below the shoulders by a tomato, and the round ends when all of the players on one side are eliminated.

You want to start with plenty of ammo!

Note the videographer from a local TV station catching the action, using raincoats to protect herself and her camera from catching a tomato.

Rush the other team!

Going in for the kill!

"Ha! You missed!"

 Regroup for another charge!

Attack!

Time out for an injury. It turned out she wasn't hurt badly, just some tomato juice in the eye. I'm sure it burned until it was washed out with tears. But since she was hit above the shoulders, she was not eliminated. And she was game! Five minutes later she was back in the fray.

Despite the tomato-juice-in-the-eye incident, it was all great fun. I'll bet just about all of the warriors will be back at it next year. Yet ......

that's a lot of BLTs that won't get made this year.