With a blast and a roar, the lumpy orange missile exploded out of the cannon, leaving behind a white trail of smoke as it shot toward its target — a car placed there to be pulverized by the projectile pumpkins.

This was the scene on Oct. 18 at the Seventh Annual Punkin Chuckin' Contest in the self-proclaimed "pumpkin capital of the world," Morton, Ill.

Laura Elam, event chairperson for this year's event, said the name "punkin chuckin" was a spin-off of the similar sounding appellation for the Lewes, Del., pumpkin chucking world championship.

"Theirs is called punkin chunkin and I guess that was because of the chunks of pumpkins that were shot," she said. "We didn't want the same name, so we called ours punkin chuckin."

Elam explained that as pumpkin capital of the world, Morton holds a pumpkin festival every year in September. The Morton Chamber of Commerce was looking for something to incorporate into the festival, she said, and they heard of the contest in Delaware. After three years of talking to the organizers in Delaware, and figuring out what they needed to do, they eventually found a large, open space for the chucking at Uhlman's Pumpkin Farm in rural Groveland, Ill.

"If you grow pumpkins, you might as well chuck 'em," Elam said.

The event and the machines used have received mention in several national and international newspapers and TV shows, as well as a high school math book, but Elam said, "(The contest) is just for fun — it brings notoriety to Morton."

And fun it was. There was country music playing in the background, with pie, doughnuts, muffins, chili and ice cream — all made from pumpkins. Children gathered corn husks into makeshift furniture as old kitchen appliances were thrown by the ACME catapult company's trebuchet — a medieval style catapult.

Inspecting the twisted metal and shards of glass covering the back seat of one of the pumpkin-battered cars, Wheaton, Ill., resident Mollie Williams said she was very shocked by how much damage the pumpkins had done.

"I will respect pumpkins from now on," she said.

The damage was caused by the Aludium Q-36 Pumpkin Modulator which was developed from "a vision in a bar" drawn on the back of napkins, according to builder Steve Young, of Washington, Ill. The name came from cartoon character Marvin the Martian's "Aludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator."

Another builder Brad Livek, also from Washington, said the cannon worked similarly to the elementary school pastime of shooting spitballs from a pen, using an air compression system to shoot the pumpkins. He said the group of men who built the cannon had the parts, including an old cement mixer, as "surplus junk lying around the shop."

The modulator team, which built the cannon and set the world record for a chucking of 4,859 feet in 2001, has already set its next aim — to break a mile.

Karen Heerde of Armington, Ill., team captain Chuck Heerde's mother, described the amount of work the team put in.

"We had to take food to these guys or else they wouldn't have eaten," she said. "Four months they worked on it day and night."

But it's fun for both Karen and Tom, Chuck's father. They described the event as "good clean family entertainment" and even joked about it to Chuck.

"I asked Chuck, did you ever think you'd be famous for throwing pumpkins?" Karen said laughing.

Mike Badgerow, executive director of the Morton Chamber of Commerce, was the announcer at the event and said he loved the pumpkin chucking.

"It's the most unique thing to see around here," he said.

The event's slogan is "bringing agriculture and engineering together for the fun of it" and Badgerow described how the people interested in engineering were the most involved in the building of the catapults and cannons.

"These guys look at these things like they're the Starship Enterprise," he said jokingly. "Like 'ooh, I want one.'"

Chris Armstrong, of the team whose trebuchet was named "Armed and Dangerous," and whose farthest chuck is 693 feet, said his team built the catapult simply because, "It's cool."

He described himself as a dynamist at heart and that it was fun to go through the underlying physics of the catapult.

"It's pretty slick," he said. "It's kinda elegant."

Dale Beaver, of Germantown, Ill., is a teacher at Manual High School, and was in charge of the children who made "Mr. Chuckles," a catapult made of wood, duct tape and parts one would find in any normal garage, and won third place in its category. He described how the children had done everything themselves and that he thought it was a great way to teach children engineering — even if sometimes the pumpkin went the other way and had a "negative" trajectory, in which case the crowd directly behind the catapult cleared away.

One backward flying pumpkin hit a new truck parked behind its line of fire. Owner Dennis McIntire, of Peoria, Ill., looked at the splattered remains of the orange pumpkin and shrugged it off.

"It hit it, but it didn't hurt it." he said. "They told us not to be in the line of fire."