Fergus Falls man to ride giant pumpkin down Red River to break world record

Rick Swenson took his pumpkin to the river Red to ride
from Grand Forks down to Oslo on the water's pulsing tide.
He'd grown it in his meadow where the mourning doves did coo;
he scooped it out with shovel to create a round canoe.
This Swenson was a sturdy chap, who yearned for Guinness fame;
he didn't want to drink the stuff, just win their listing game.
His mother by the riverbank did plead with him in vain
to come back home instead to fix the stopped up kitchen drain.
His friends said it was folly, and his pastor shook his head;
his high school teachers recommended he should stay in bed.
But Swenson spurned their doubts and fears, and tipped his pumpkin in,
and used his oaken paddle to prevent a lot of spin.
The water gurgled, cold and gray, as cruel as Donald Trump;
the branches and the snags reached out, his fragile bark to dump.
Brave Swenson steered around them all, including sandbars hid
just below the water, full of broken glass and squid.
Along the banks the crowded ranks of well-wishers did yell
as he floated by serene inside his pumpkin shell.
He hit a log and near capsized, but righted at the last.
He waved in manly solitude while motorboats roared past.
Six and twenty miles he rode his pumpkin without fail -- 
and then ran into trouble when the weather turned to hail!
It pummeled him and pierced the pumpkin shell so that it sank;
he was nearly frozen when they dragged him to the bank.
And so the Guinness Record Book did not receive the news,
and Swenson went back home to fix the drains and sadly muse
on how the whimsies of the gods gave freely of renown
to some, but to the others left them feeling like a clown.