FREDERICKTOWN — What do you get when you pour thirty gallons of water, 10 pounds of ice and copious amounts of tomato juice into a cast-iron bathtub?
The ever-popular Fredericktown Tomato Show Bathtub Races, of course.
Dean Shira, who brought the annual attraction to Fredericktown, explained the genesis of the race.
“You’ll never believe how I got the idea for this,” Shira said. “I was at Ohio State Homecoming and I saw some guys coming down the street pushing a bed, and I thought, ‘well, there is the bathtub race.’”
Through the years, the “Show” has featured other attractions, but the bathtub races seemed to Shira like the needed change.
“We had tractor pulls, rock throwing, some of those guys could throw a rock 20 feet. We just needed something new,” Shira said. “I decided the bathtub races would be the thing to do.”
As with most events, there have been changes over the years.
The first year, (the participants) were supposed to have their own bathtub, they had to be cast iron not steel and it had to have wheels.
“You could have two pushers and one driver and it had to be steerable from the inside of the bathtub and we ran two tubs at a time so there were a lot of wrecks,” Shira said.
Now the tubs are run one at a time to reduce the chances of crashes.
“About 15 years ago when this thing started, we had a company manufacturing some carts to put the bathtubs on and that way we wouldn’t have that trouble,” Shira said.
There, however, was still some safety tweaking that needed to be done.
“That (the carts) worked out pretty well other than when they turned around,” Shira said. “We had to build a retaining wall to hold that bank up, once in a while they will run into that wall and that will bend the steering up some.”
When Shira mentioned the turnaround, he was talking about the layout of the course. The tub is pushed approximately 250 feet and then a 180 degree turn and then the last leg, slightly uphill, and another 250 feet.
“It doesn’t look like until you’re down there how much uphill it is to the finish line,” he said. While the race has proven to be safe, organizers want to keep it that way,
“One of the rules is that you don’t let go of the bathtub on the way down, because there are usually people standing in the way,” he said.
Other rules include, there can be no more than three team members, one driver and two pushers, drivers must have a valid drivers license. All participants must sign waivers, the winners will be determined based on time and hitting the cone at the turnaround is a disqualification.
Different drivers have different strategies.
“There was a guy who drove race cars around here and I would notice him throwing water out during the run, that made the tub lighter,” Shira said.
The combination of the water, the tub, the ice and tomato juice, the “vehicle” can weigh upwards of 400 pounds not counting the weight of the driver.
In order to make the races more equitable, the Tomato Show began furnishing the bathtubs and carts.
“In this way, all participants are pushing about the same weight,” Shira explained.
Why would anyone climb into a bathtub filled with water, ice and tomato juice?
“It is cold, and we had talked about entering this at work, DiMichaelangelo Dentistry,” Andrea Simpson explained.
Winners of the categories were recognized at the conclusion of the event.
Winners
Women’s Any Age
- The Basement Bees
- Low Expectations
Men and Women’s Under 25
- F.E.A.R.N. Defending champions and best overall time
- Sigman Beans
Minister Challenge
- Cornerstone Community Church
Regardless of who won or lost, a fun time was had by all, the participants, the hundreds of spectators and especially those filling the tubs with ice, water and tomato juice.
Knox Community Hospital proudly supports the vibrant pulse of our community by sponsoring the Life & Culture section on Knox Pages, celebrating the stories and experiences that make our region unique.