Harvest Fest volunteer Bob Turrentine, ‘Bullseye Bob,’ is king of the giant pumpkin drop in Stillwater

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·6 min read

Not many people could orchestrate dropping a 1,500-pound pumpkin from the top of a 100-foot crane into a children’s wading pool.

You must line up the massive orange gourd just right. You must know how to tie the right kind of knot. You must know the best kind of lubricant to use on the pin that is pulled to release the contraption. And you must have a long rope to reach that pin.

When organizers of Stillwater Harvest Fest needed someone to oversee the giant pumpkin drop a decade ago, they turned to Bob Turrentine.

Turrentine, 75, of Stillwater, is a veteran boater, who knows how to tie a knot that can hold a 1,500-pound pumpkin and he’s at it again this weekend.

“It’s kind of a unique slip knot,” said Turrentine, a retired attorney. “I’m sure that there’s a name for it, and that longshoremen know all about it, but it’s just something I kind of made up, and it turns out that it worked.”

“We call him ‘Bullseye Bob,’” said Harvest Fest organizer Cory Buettner. “He never misses.”

NERVE-WRACKING WORK

In his 10 years of dropping giant pumpkins, there’s been only one major mishap, Turrentine said. “The second or third year that I did it, I tied the knot, and it wouldn’t release,” he said.

His wife, Linda Besk Turrentine, was serving as the emcee of the event that year.

Here’s how she tells the story: “Here I am, ‘TEN! NINE! EIGHT!’ the whole thing. We get down to, ‘ONE,’ and it doesn’t do anything. He pulls it back up, and we go through the whole thing again: ‘TEN! NINE! EIGHT!’ It still doesn’t go. Then he pulls it for the third try, and I said, ‘Well, maybe this is like my marriages: The third is going to be the charm.’”

The third time was indeed the charm.

“That’s when I started using Pam, the vegetable spray, to lubricate the knot, so it releases easily,” Bob Turrentine said.

“But not too easily,” Linda Besk Turrentine added.

Overseeing the drop is not for the faint-hearted.

“It’s always nerve-racking when he’s under this pumpkin that is hanging above him, and he’s directing the crane where to position it, and it’s, like, ‘I guess he’d have time to run like hell,’” Linda Besk Turrentine said.

But her husband assures her that he has “great faith” in his knot-tying abilities.

“I am extremely safety-conscious about this,” he said, adding that he’s strict about where people stand.

Does Turrentine have to monitor the barometric pressure? Temperature? Wind speed?

“I would like to say yes, but the truth is no,” he said. “When you’re dropping a giant pumpkin from 100 feet up, I mean I guess hurricane-force winds might have an effect, but the normal winds around here? No.”

THE THUMP OF THE DROP

Event organizers always plan something new and different each year for the pumpkin drop. In 2017, a pumpkin painted in Minnesota Vikings colors smashed a pumpkin decorated in Green Bay Packers colors. Two years before that was the infamous year of the candy, when organizers filled a hollowed-out giant pumpkin with $300 worth of candy from Costco.

“That year I was the finder of lost children,” Buettner said. “It was every parent’s nightmare, and we said, ‘We cannot do candy ever again.’ All the kids wanted to go in early.”

The area around the pumpkin drop is taped off each year with caution tape. Once the pumpkin has dropped, children are allowed to run in and collect pumpkin seeds to grow their own giant pumpkins the following year.

“We keep pushing the circumference of the safety zone back each year,” Buettner said. “We’ve had some close calls with chunks coming out, but no one’s really ever gotten hurt.”

On Sunday, organizers plan to have two or three giant pumpkins land on the ground — rather than in a pool or on top of another pumpkin, Buettner said.

“We want the thump,” he said. “You can feel it. I’m hoping this year it will make a good noise. In the past, we’ve always been, ‘Let’s drop it in water,’ or ‘Let’s drop it on another pumpkin,’ and you kind of get a different kind of splat. This year, I want to thump the earth.”

A LIFETIME OF BOATING

Turrentine grew up in San Diego — learning to sail on a Hobie Cat sailboat in Mission Bay when he was 8 years old. After graduating from San Diego State University and California Western School of Law, he moved to Stillwater in 1974.

After practicing law for 12 years, he made a major career change, purchasing a dive shop in the British Virgin Islands, which he owned and operated for four years.

When he returned to Stillwater, he took a job working in the civil division of the Washington County Attorney’s Office for 15 years, specializing in real estate.

He retired in 2001 at the age of 55 following a massive “heart event,” he said. “They didn’t know why I had it, and they didn’t know if it would happen again. I decided, ‘You know, I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life being an attorney,’ so I retired.”

He and Linda have been married for 29 years; they have four children between them, including Linda’s son, Ted Kozlowski, who is mayor of Stillwater.

“I knew my dad had a lot of unique skills: He can fly a hot-air balloon, he’s a great sailor, skier and chef, but I was really surprised by his ability to guide pumpkins on target with such accuracy,” Kozlowski said.

The Turrentines spend their winters in the Bahamas on their 48-foot Kadey-Krogen trawler named Veda L., in honor of Turrentine’s grandmother.

Turrentine plans this weekend to begin training his apprentice, Brandon Lamb, on the fine art of pumpkin dropping. “It might be time to pass the torch,” he said. “Brandon is the only one who has expressed any interest.”

Lamb, the owner of Candyland in downtown Stillwater, said he’s confident that he’ll be able to step up if the time comes.

“You basically make two hoops, and then you fasten it very, very tightly around the base of the pumpkin,” he said. “The pin goes in between the two ropes. It’s got to be tight. The pin is holding those two loops together. When you pull the pin out, that releases any pressure that the rope is creating to hold that pumpkin in place.”

Who’s bringing the Pam?

“I suppose I’ll have to,” Lamb said. “That’s Lesson No. 1: Do not forget the Pam. I hope I don’t miss.”

IF YOU GO

What: Stillwater Harvest Fest

When: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday

Where: Lowell Park on the St. Croix River in downtown Stillwater

Highlights: 100-foot pumpkin drops, 5:30 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday; children’s tractor pull, 3-5 p.m. Sunday; chili cook-off, 1-4 p.m. Saturday; pie-eating contest, 2 p.m. Saturday; children’s costume parade, 11:30 a.m. Sunday; pumpkin boat regatta, 2 p.m. Sunday; live music all weekend.

Information: harvestfeststillwater.com

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