Interesting Emendations: Calvin Trillin's "Breaux Bridge, Louisiana"

Photo by Peter Frank Edwards, from Calvin Trillin's "Breaux Bridge, Louisiana"

If you read Calvin Trillin’s classic “Breaux Bridge, Louisiana,” in last week’s “Archival Issue,” and were curious about who won the crawfish-eating contest, check out Trillin’s American Fried (1974). Its version of the piece ends with two additional paragraphs, the first of which contains this wonderful description of the eating champ:

The winner, Chester McGear, looked like one of the fraternity boys everyone had been so worried about, although he had actually graduated a couple of years before. He wore a sweatshirt emblematic of having consumed ten pitchers of beer in some tavern in Chicago, and he had a small rooting section that chanted “Go, Chester, Go!” or “Allons, Chester, Allons! or “Come on, Chester, Eat That Meat!” He was on his twenty-second pound of crawfish when his final opponent dropped out. I was pleased to see that McGear acted the part of a traditional eating champ. They never admit to being full. My father always used to tell me about a boy who won a pie-eating contest in St. Joe by eating thirty-three pies and then said, “I wooda ate more but my ma was calling me for supper.” When the reporters went up on the stand to interview McGear, he remained at his place, and as he answered the questions he absently reached toward the platter in front of him and peeled crawfish and popped them into his mouth, like a man working on the peanut bowl during a cocktail party.