Lunkers

Beowulf was a lunker.

I was digging potatoes recently and the first one I came up with was something special. When I got it back to the house, it weighed in at 1 1/4 pounds. I hadn’t grown Katahdins before, but I may need to grow them again. I dug up 25 potatoes that day and several others were almost as big. I remembered that the catalog from which I ordered said that there were lots of “lunkers.” I didn’t think much about it then, but now I wondered exactly what it meant. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary had never heard of lunkers, neither had the Merriam Webster American Dictionary. Neither for that matter, has my spell check.

When all else fails, go on line. The Free Online Dictionary had the answer: “Lunker: Something, especially a game fish, that is large for its kind.”

I was also intrigued by the “Lunker Lure & Hawg Caller Fishing Tackle Catalog” and “Carolina Lunker Sauce.” The latter product is not for your hamburgers; it’s a fish attractant.

But “something . . .that is large for its kind” seems a good description of Beowulf. Not Grendel: Grendel was the usual size for monsters. Saul was a lunker: “When he took his stand among the people, he was head and shoulders taller than any of them.”(I Kings 10:23) Goliath was a lunker. Maybe Abraham Lincoln was a lunker. I’ve noticed that bishops tend to be lunkers.

But I digress. I just wanted to tell you about potatoes. And add to your vocabulary.

It’s been a good year for lunkers. I’ve also been harvesting apples that weigh in at 3/4 of a pound.