ANOKA, Minn. — It's not always easy to see greatness before it blossoms.
But the seeds of success were already sprouting when we met Travis Gienger — the first time.
The year was 2011.
As usual, Travis was in his pumpkin patch.
“You can kind of tap it and see how thick the walls are,” Travis said as he crouched next to a massive pumpkin.
Electric fans purred around the clock to prevent rot in the well-irrigated pumpkin patch.
Depending on the time of day, Travis draped — and undraped — his largest pumpkin with a quilt.
“I put dark side out to let the sun heat it up,” the then-31-year-old said.
Years earlier, as a teenager, Travis was already dreaming.
Photos show him at 14 and 15, posing proudly with pumpkins ready for competition.
“I used to go to the dentist and sit there and read the 'Guinness Book of World Records' and see these guys, and I was like, ‘Oh, that's kind of neat,’" Travis recalls.
So, he started his pumpkins under baby greenhouses, ran heat coils through their soil, fed them various concoctions several times a day, and gave them names.
“I named this one Chewbakka,” Travis told us in the garden 12 years ago.
All of which caused us to gently rib Travis about his prospects of winning, say, a wife.
“They tend to think you enjoy this stuff much more than them,” Travis said with a chuckle in 2011.
Foolish us.
“We met the end of 2017 and then 2020 is when we got married,” Travis’ wife, Megan, tells us a dozen years later during our return visit to see Travis.
Between our visits, Megan and Travis also produced a little pumpkin.
“Lily, she just turned 2 in July,” Megan says. “She's just the joy of our life.”
Lily is only starting to understand the depth of the pumpkin affection we witnessed 12 years ago, and the heartbreak her dad felt this summer when Travis' largest pumpkin first revealed a small, but fatal, crack.
Megan remembers the day.
“That morning I was getting Lily ready for daycare and Travis had walked past the window, and I just saw the expression on his face.”
Megan continues, “I knew that something had happened to one of the pumpkins and I told Lily I think one of the pumpkins got hurt.”
Later that morning, Megan snapped a picture of Lily in the pumpkin patch, “just crying when we went out to visit Godzilla.”
Which makes what happened last month even sweeter.
Travis stood centerstage in Half Moon Bay, California as a sling gently lowered his second biggest pumpkin of the year onto a scale.
He’d pulled the pumpkin he named “Michael Jordan” on a trailer all the way from Minnesota.
Beneath the stage were hundreds of people who’d gathered for the World Pumpkin Championship Weigh-Off.
Like Travis, the crowd stood silently, all eyes fixed on a digital board above the scale.
The existing world record belonged to a pumpkin from Italy that weighed 2,702 pounds.
The board lit up.
Travis jumped in excitement.
The PA announcer screamed, “2-7-4-9!”
Travis had broken the record by 48 pounds.
Pandemonium ensued as Travis pumped his fists, jumped around the stage, and began hugging everyone within reach.
Megan and Lily joined Travis on stage, as speakers blared Freddie Mercury singing, “We are the Champions."
Travis had successfully made the transition from teen garden geek to world record holder about to collect $30,000 in prize money.
Twice before, he’d been recognized at Half Moon Bay as the grower of the year’s largest pumpkin, but this was his first world record.
Headlines carried Travis’ feat around the globe.
Anoka proclaimed Oct. 28, “Travis Gienger Day.”
Perched atop a pumpkin-orange Corvette, Travis carved a path as celebrity grand marshal through the city's Halloween parade.
The pumpkin patch next to Travis’ home was blanketed by snow the day we visited Travis, 12 years after our first meeting.
“You can see the dirt,” Travis says, as he reaches through the first snow of the season to grab a handful of soil. “That's it,” he says. “That's what grew it.”
In Travis’ basement, a couple hundred seeds from his world record pumpkin sit on a window screen, repurposed as a drying rack.
An electric fan runs non-stop.
Most of the seeds Travis will give to pumpkin clubs around the world that request them.
A few, he’ll keep.
The rest, Travis plans to sell to other growers for $275 per seed.
“It's a chance,” Travis says, looking down at the seeds. “You never know what it might lead to — maybe the first 3,000-pounder is sitting right here.”
So says a man who dreams big.
Boyd Huppert is always looking for great stories to share in the Land of 10,000 Stories! Send us your suggestions by filling out this form.
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