Civilization's Missing Links?

By Rick Horowitz

What you've got here, friends, is your classic clash of good old-fashioned values. In this corner: the drive to excel, that deep-down desire to be the very best at what you do. And in this corner: the drive to keep some fool from throwing up all over your shoes.

Welcome to Sheboygan, Wis., home of Bratwurst Days. (And they say nobody cares about tradition anymore....)

Sheboygan, you understand, is to bratwurst what Baltimore is to crab cake, what Seattle is to half-decaf-grande-vanilla-skim-latte. To get any closer to Bratwurst Central, you'd have to be inside a pig -- a perfectly disgusting concept, I grant you, but no more disgusting than putting pig inside of you. Or so one Mr. Clarence Mertz apparently believes.

Mr. Mertz is a former city attorney for Sheboygan. He is not a happy man, the stories say, and what's making him unhappy is the prospect of a Sheboygan-style bratwurst-eating contest later this summer. Seems there was a Sheboygan-style bratwurst-eating contest last summer, too. Seems that one of last summer's contestants was so hot for victory, he ate more bratwursts than he should have eaten.

Then he vomited. Then he kept eating even more bratwursts.

Now, being an attorney, Mr. Mertz might have pondered the legal ramifications of this explosive little incident. He might have considered, for instance, whether bratwurst eaters deserve full credit for every brat they shove down their gullets, or only the ones that stay down.

This is not what he did. What he did was complain to the authorities -- the Sheboygan Common Council, that is -- and to the Jaycees, who sponsored the festival in the first place. He wanted the contest cancelled.

Mr. Mertz called the chow-down a "gluttonous affair," which is pretty much the point, isn't it? He also called it "irreligious," which may be a first for a brat bout, although he probably had one of the Seven Deadlies in mind. (I'm guessing "Dopey.")

Anyway, the Common Council did zilch, and with the '97 competition coming up, so to speak, Mr. Mertz recently tried one more time, asking the mayor for a resolution banning the thing. The mayor agreed only to forward the request to a Common Council committee, and he seemed less than floored by Mr. Mertz's arguments.

"It is part of Bratwurst Days," Hizzoner explained. "It is fine and just another contest, as long as no one gets sick."

There's the rub -- but there's the hint of a remedy, too. Enter the Bratwurst Days Festival Committee (don't ask) with a compromise solution: a new sign, and a rules change. The sign will be put up near the brat-eating venue, and will warn competitors that eating too many brats in a hurry can make you sick.

And the rules change? It's a biggie: No longer will eager Sheboyganites be fighting it out for just a single "Golden Pig" trophy. From now on, the top three finishers will get trophies. That way, the Festival Committee is convinced, the competition will be less intense, so there'll be less chance of someone giving his all, and then giving it right back.

Good try, Festival Committee, but really now: A sign? You mean these folks don't already know that multi-brats in mini-minutes can turn a stomach upside down? Talk about obvious!

As for that expanded victory stand -- well, consider this little nugget from the newspaper: "In a typical year, the contest gets about five participants."

Five.

Five people in the entire competition, and they'll be giving prizes to the top three -- you think that'll relieve the pressure? How'd you like to finish fourth? Talk about embarrassing! Talk about stressful!

Enough talk. Pass me down that platter.

7/4/97