Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 24, 1993                   TAG: 9309240241
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BOONES MILL                                LENGTH: Medium

FORGET ABOUT JACK; BEN'S TALE IS TALL, TOO, BUT TRUE

Sink, 31, shelled out $2 apiece for 10 Giant Atlantic Dill pumpkin seeds. They were advertised to grow pumpkins weighing up to 800 pounds. And the brochure didn't lie.

Sink hasn't yet weighed the biggest pumpkin he grew from the seeds, but one of the smaller ones tipped the scales at 140 pounds.

"I'm going to guess it's going to be over 400 pounds," Sink said, pointing to the biggest pumpkin in his patch. "I would say 500, but I'd be going out on a limb."

One of the smaller pumpkins - weighing maybe 200 pounds - serves as Sink's advertising for the normal-sized pumpkins he sells along U.S. 220 south of Boones Mill.

"I'll get my money back just by sitting the one on the road and people coming in," Sink said of the $20 he paid for the seeds.

Or Sink may get his seed money back all at once - and then some. Thursday afternoon, the big pumpkin along the highway attracted a man who was not interested in $2 and $3 pumpkins.

"Is that big one out front for sale?" the customer asked.

"Yes," Sink said, pausing to think of a price. "Thirty bucks."

How much does it weigh? the man wanted to know.

"Two hundred pounds," Sink told the disbelieving customer. "If it's not, I'll give you your money back."

Sink plans to enter one of the huge pumpkins in the state fair - that is, if he doesn't get tempted and sell it.

See, Sink knows people are starting to talk. He overheard one woman at a restaurant telling her husband:

"There's a pumpkin patch out on 220, and there was one pumpkin as big as a van."

And that was one of the small ones.