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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=545170
Posted: Dec. 22, 2006
Mike Nichols

Everybody has their holiday traditions and the important thing is not to let the season slip by without acknowledging them.

Thus, we pause to note that, for what Tom Latane said Friday was the first time ever, they've finally nailed Dippy the Elf up in Pepin in western Wisconsin.

This is no small feat because Dippy, even for an elf, is very short. He is only 8 inches tall.

Dippy, said Tom, is a "stuffed elf that my daughter had when she was little that she said we could use."

He assures me his daughter, now 16, is not any way traumatized by what he does to Dippy - although there were some spectators this year who seemed concerned about Dippy himself. Quite predictably, there was even some talk, he says, about "cruelty to elves."

It is true that they placed Dippy in a vacant lot on a 9-degree day. But they did sit him on a little bench.

It's true, too, that Dippy kept getting blown off the bench because there was, as Tom puts it, a "good stiff wind blowing across the lot."

But they did prop him back up more than once - at least until they got tired of running down there from where they kept all the fruitcakes and the catapult.

Most reasonable people know by now that fruitcake is the perfect projectile. Tom himself first realized this when he was helping his wife's grandmother move 25 years ago, and found no fewer than three old, frozen fruitcakes in the back of her freezer.

Those were tossed only in a Dumpster, but what a waste.

Tom is a 51-year-old blacksmith and pretty handy. But the first catapult he built about five years ago for what he calls the annual "Fruitcake Toss" during Pepin's holiday festival threw the fruitcakes only about 30 feet.

Heck, people do that in their living rooms all the time.

Now, he has a "trebuchet," a special catapult he built along with some kids he mentors. They spent more hours than he cares to admit putting it together - so many hours, in fact, he feels like he should use it more than just once a year to fire fruitcakes at Dippy.

Maybe, he thinks, he could take it out in the summer and launch rotten melons.

Tom says he could actually eat a fruitcake - if anyone would ever actually give him one for that reason. It's just that the ones with those fossilized "brilliant green" and "brilliant red" fruit-things on top clearly were never intended for that.

Those are perfect for tossing, especially if they sit in the freezer for about a year and get nice and hard. People receiving fruitcakes this week, in other words, should not toss them - yet.

Tom actually made the one that nailed Dippy all by himself. It was a big, round one that weighed 2 pounds and, in accordance with the rules, had two types of frozen fruit in it. He used old bananas and frozen oranges that were originally intended for the orioles. He also put birdseed in there, which seems appropriate because fruitcakes have to be edible, but just barely.

The tossings took place on Dec. 1. Some 25 or 30 people showed up, and quite a few brought their own fruitcakes for tossing.

"At one point I turned around," said Tom, "and there was a whole pile of fruitcakes to be tossed."

Dippy was 100 feet away and most of them didn't even get close. Some that were freshly baked just spun around and shot back into the trebuchet.

Tom's, though, flew beautifully. It hit the ground, he says, about 5 feet in front of Dippy, who had luckily blown over right into the perfect spot. And then it just sort of rolled into him while people cheered.

Of course, says Tom, people cheered anytime they actually got one of the things airborne.

Which you can certainly understand.

E-mail mnichols@journalsentinel.com or call (262)376-4374.

For more information about Pepin, Wisconsin, email
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or call 800-442-3011.

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