Lind, Washington

Caution, and shirts, thrown to the wind

"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight."

When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote that poem, he certainly never anticipated it might be applied to a pair of princesses preparing to fire off an improvised slingshot during a break in the action at the Combine Demolition Derby in Lind, Washington.

The derby is a metal-to-metal jousting match in which the winner is the last machine left limping around the rodeo arena. Between heats, the local royalty and radio station team up to launch T-shirts into the stands, and occasionally over them. The shooting takes all the weight and will of these local princesses.

The way the crowds scramble for these Fruit of the Looms you'd think they were woven of golden threads instead of cotton and poly. Then again, how often do you get to snag a free T-shirt that a relative didn't dump on you from Vegas?