INDIANA NEWS

A big crowd gathered to ring in the New Year by watching a glowing 550-pound steel and foam watermelon rise into the sky and drop real watermelons to the ground, delighting organizers of the unique event.

The inaugural New Year's Eve Watermelon Drop drew an estimated crowd of some 2,500 to the southwestern Indiana city's downtown, lining up around Patrick Henry Square for the midnight drop.

Patty Street of Vincennes and her friend, Leah Vaught of Mount Carmel, Ill., were among the many who came early to pose for a picture in front of the giant melon.

"We just had to come and see this," Street said.

"How could you not want to be a part of this?" said Vaught.

Organizers began working on the event a year earlier as a way for families to have fun together on New Year's Eve — and as a way to promote the melon-growing farms in Knox County, which is in the heart of one of the nation's top melon-producing regions.

The crowd started gathering around 8 p.m. and listened to a band as the temperatures kept falling — reaching 18 degrees at midnight.

Tom Nowaskie, a member of the committee that organized the event, admitted to being a little worried at first that few people would attend.

"But they started coming down, and pretty soon, when I turned around and looked, there was quite a crowd watching," he said. "And it just kept getting bigger and bigger."

Organizing committee member John Frenz had the job of pulling the rope at midnight to release the real watermelons for their 100-foot splat.

"I tugged, and nothing happened," he said afterward. "I started thinking, 'What happens if they don't fall out?' We'd done all this work and then I couldn't get the watermelons to come out!

"So I tugged again, harder, and still nothing," Frenz said. "Then I bent down and got a real good hold on the line and tugged as hard as I could and it gave way and they started to fall.

"All I could say was, 'Thank God!'"

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Information from: Vincennes Sun-Commercial, http://www.vincennes.com