Since Mt Olive, North Carolina, location of the annual Pickle Drop, is only an hour and half from where I live, I decided to attend this small-town, family-friendly New Year’s Eve event this year. Last year’s event drew 2,000 people in a town with a population of less than 5,000. I also had the chance to interview Lynn Williams, Community Relations Representative of the Mt Olive Pickle Company, sponsors of the event.

Mt Olive, NC Pickle Drop 2009 from Jeff Cohen on Vimeo.

The Pickle Drop is based on a boast made by World War II bombardiers that they were so accurate, they could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel. And in the 1950s they were invited by Pickle Packers International to test this skill by dropping pickles off a skyscraper into barrels on the sidewalk below. This idea germinated in the minds of Mt Olive Pickle employees, and in 1999, the first Pickle Drop was held in front of 8 people. By 2001 the event was opened to the public. It occurs on company grounds at 7pm, which happens to be the stroke of midnight Greenwich Mean Time.

Mt Olive Pickle Facts:

• Mt. Olive celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2006 and is the largest privately held pickle company in the U.S.
• They pack over 100 million jars of processed and fresh pack pickles, relishes and peppers annually.
• They buy over 130 million pounds of cucumbers and peppers each year in over nine states and two foreign countries. About one-third of that is purchased from independent growers in North Carolina.
• Each April the town of Mt Olive celebrates the NC Pickle Festival, which includes a bike ride called the Tour de Pickle.

New York:
The Ball Drop in Times Square stems from an even older ritual in England when a descending Time Ball was a popular method of signaling noon to allow pocket watches and nearby at sea ships chronometer’s to be reset daily. This tradition continues onward today in Washington D.C. at the United States Naval Observatory where it still drops a Time Ball down a flag pole every day at noon.

The latest ball measures 6 feet in diameter. The lighted Ball descends 77 feet in sixty seconds. The Ball is a geodesic sphere, six feet in diameter, weighing approximately 1,070 pounds. The Ball is covered with 504 Waterford crystal triangles, 696 multicolored Philips light bulbs, 96 high intensity strobe lights, and 90 rotating pyramid mirrors.

Atlanta: Giant Peach
New Orleans: Gumbo Pot
Mt. Olive, NC: Giant Pickle
Port Clinton, Ohio: 600-pound fiberglass walleye

Let me know if you know of anything else.