His arms raised and his tongue stuck out, 12-year-old Mike Casey looked like a winner - albeit one with smudges of cherry pie all over his nose, lips and chin.
Casey, from Laurel, used his well-honed skills to beat competitors in the Howard County Fair's pie-eating contest yesterday, earning him a silver trough as a trophy. It was his third consecutive win, and all the more impressive because he took on 13- to 17-year-olds this year.
Earlier, his 7-year-old brother, Joey, ate his way to victory in the 5-to-8-years-old group.
"I just like the food," Mike Casey said with a grin.
The weeklong fair opened yesterday, drawing visitors with attractions such as bands, the Farm Queen Contest, herds of animals, and quirky crowd-pleasers like the pie-eating competition. Rain didn't keep away fairgoers, many of whom came to the West Friendship fairgrounds clad in rain coats and carrying umbrellas.
Pie-eaters gathered in the covered show ring at lunch time, their goal simple: Eat a piece of pie as quickly as possible - without using hands, let alone silverware. Casey compensated by bringing his face as close to the table as possible, but that's not the hardest part, he said. Swallowing is.
It made for a messy event, but the kids weren't complaining.
"It's just fun eating stuff, having an excuse not to use forks," said Alex Proia, 13, a Clarksville resident who opted for apple pie.
Several hours later, volunteers led dairy cattle into the ring for another crowd-pleaser: the milking contest.
Each of the four milkers - picked from the audience for their experience with cows - was lent a stool, a bucket and a Jersey cow to gather as much milk as possible in four minutes. Judy Iager, a dairy and turkey farmer who runs the contest with her husband, Charles, ambled around the show ring in a cow costume.
"Aren't these beautiful bovines out here?" she asked.
The contest, an attraction at the fair for 18 years, is for many viewers an introduction to the gentle art of milking a cow in the not-at-all-gentle context of heat, noise and crowds. Dairy cattle aren't at their best in such conditions - they're used to the quiet of the farm - and thus their output isn't impressive. The record - set in 1984 by Frank Walbert - is nine pounds.
"If we were milking a cow normally in that four minutes, we could have, say, 35 pounds," said Judy Iager.
The event continues to be popular: This year it moved to prime time - the intermission during the Farm Queen contest - and drew a standing-room-only crowd.
Columbia resident Steve Sealing surprised himself by winning the event with 4.4 pounds of milk. He raised Jersey cows when he lived on a farm in Dayton 30 years ago, but he can't remember the last time he milked a cow by hand.
"It wasn't too bad until I got into the third minute. My hand started to cramp up," he said.
The point of the contest is good farm fun, although some insist it has had greater impact.
Charles I. Ecker won the event twice in a row - 1990 and 1991 - and thinks the first win helped in his successful bid for county executive that year.
"That did it," he said, laughing. "All those cows voted for me."
Charles C. Feaga, a former county councilman who is president of the Howard County Farm Bureau, remembers the '91 contest well. First he got a cow with no milk. Then he got one with a penchant for kicking.
"We take it for granted," Feaga said, "but it's not easy to get milk out of a cow."
