Egg Pocking

Egg knocking contests are not for the faint of heart. It’s a ruthless game—no quarter asked, none given. 

An elderly man chuckles as he is victorious over an eight-year-old girl. Biting back tears, the child leaves the stage as the man advances to the next round of the Cottonport Knockin’ on the Bayou Easter Festival.

Yes, there is crying in the sport of egg knocking, and to the residents of the tiny Avoyelles Parish town of Cottonport, the annual ritual is a familiar part of the Easter tradition.

Egg knocking or “pocking” is a winner-take-all activity. If you lose, your opponent gets your Easter egg. And it’s worth shedding a tear over a lost Easter egg.

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The concept is simple: you hold your Easter egg in your clenched hand as your opponent knocks his egg against yours. If your egg cracks, you lose. In rural communities, to own the chicken that laid the egg with the hardest shell was a badge of honor akin to having the fastest quarter horse or the blue ribbon pig.  

The game has played out in Cajun households for generations. I remember crying when my grandfather won all of the eggs from my Easter basket. Thinking I had somehow been tricked, I calmed myself with Gold Brick eggs. More on trickery later.

The term “pocking” is either derived from the French word for Easter (Pâques) or the “poc poc” sound the eggs make when struck together. Though impromptu pocking events have been held in the households of Cottonport and other Acadiana homes for generations, the Cottonport egg knocking tournament began in Scotty Scott’s bar in the center of the Bayou Rouge town.

Carl “Pappy” Juneau, 73, has been involved in the tournament for sixty years and fondly remembered the contests in the tavern.

“At the time we’d bet a beer and if you lost, you bought the beer,” Juneau said. “We’d start at four Friday afternoon and go to two in the morning on Saturday. It’s been an Easter fest for the last seven years and become family oriented.”  Possibly remembering a few beer hangovers, he added a hasty “Thank God.”

[Though it's now family-oriented, the Cochon de Lait Festival in Mansura had hog-wild early days.]

The Knockin’ on the Bayou Easter Festival, organized by the Cottonport Women’s Commission, is always the Saturday before Easter. In addition to the pocking contest, there’s a 5k run, Easter bonnet show, egg hunt and bake-off. But the main event is the pocking contest.

Contestants pay a dollar entry fee per egg. Juneau, who knows every trick in the book, examines each shell as they’re entered to make sure it’s bona fide. No one is going to slip a bad egg (pun intended) into the mix. As I asked co-workers and friends if they “pocked” in their households at Eastertide, any number of them told me how someone (usually fathers who believe they are witty) would use a marble or wooden egg or a guinea hen egg to pock with the little kids and otherwise unsuspecting.

“My daddy had us all wallooed,” a friend told me.

No one will be wallooed in the Cottonport tournament with Pappy Juneau standing guard.

Which eggs are the best ones for the pocking contest? The general consensus is that barnyard chicken eggs have the most durable shells. And everyone agreed that the only way to choose an egg is to tap the shell against your teeth and judge it by the sound it makes.

[More on shells: Just how do you cook a thousand-year-old egg?] 

Eric Lee of the Louisiana Egg Commission said tapping the egg against the teeth is the principle behind “belling,” a sounding technique sometimes used in the grading process to determine eggshell durability.

When I asked veteran egg knocker Earl Adams, 64, about the teeth tapping technique, he laughed and revealed his toothless upper gum. “My son chose my eggs,” he said.

The process of egg elimination is simple. Each competitor enters the ring with three eggs. Eggs are knocked together until there is one egg standing.

Even though there were more than 280 eggs registered in the 2011 contest, the action moved quickly. Spectators usually choose younger children as their favorites and cheer heartily when the kids advance. Body language usually tells the crowd who wins and loses.

The 2011 finalists were 32-year-old Lucas Pitre of Ville Platte and Kate Rozas, a youngster from Cottonport. Someone from the crowd warned Pitre, “You better not make her cry.” But Pitre had a ready answer. “Her daddy made me cry plenty of times,” he said.

Pitre proved victorious and walked away with the $100 prize, which is about enough to buy chickenfeed for his yard birds for two weeks.

For Pitre, it’s the culmination of ten years of raising his own chickens.

“I got lucky with the chickens I bought,” Pitre said. “I tested the eggs and they seemed pretty hard but you never know until you get in the competition.”