Jason Schayot
De Leon, The Heart of Texas
The annual Peach and Melon Festival is one of Texas’s oldest state celebrations. Each year, De Leon’s population goes from its usual 2,400 to more than 20,000. Held on the first full week of August, the festival features a full parade (complete with floats, cheerleaders, and baton twirlers), vintage car show, tractor pulling contest, melon auction, and a domino tournament. When the sun sets, the streets fill with people dancing the whole night away.
But the most famous event of the Peach and Melon Festival is the legendary Watermelon Spitting Contest. Each year, people belly up with a watermelon seed in their mouth, and fire away. It was on a hot day on August 12, 1995, when De Leon resident Jason Schayot stepped up to see how far he spit a seed.
In 1995, Jason Schayot was a junior at Southwestern University in Georgetown, and a descendent of two prominent families in De Leon, the Haffords and the Holdridges, who also happen to run two competing grocery stores. But no one in Jason’s family could have predicted that Jason was about to break a world record that day.
There was no wind helping Jason, but he managed to spit his seed an astonishing 75 feet and 2 inches, easily crushing the previous Peach and Melon Festival record of 49 feet and ¼ inch. After a year, the Guinness Book of World Records officially transcribed his record, with Jason’s feat easily surpassing the previous world record of 68 feet 9 1/8 inches.
Jason was never able to repeat his achievement, even with tries on a TV show and future festivals. But no one will ever forget that hot summer day when Jason made history with a far-flung watermelon seed.