Pat ‘Tater’ Mahomes takes blue ribbon at the Missouri State Fair. He’s got great hair
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As if three Super Bowl rings weren’t enough, now Patrick Mahomes has won a blue ribbon at the Missouri State Fair.
And he’s got a silky new hairdo.
Meet Pat “Tater” Mahomes.
Pat Tater is the creation of Wade Brown, a 9-year-old 4-H member who lives with his parents, Bo and Paige Brown, and little brother, Hudson, on a farm in Linn County, Missouri. That’s about 120 miles northeast of Kansas City. His grandparents live on a farm nearby.
In his first year competing at the state fair in Sedalia, which began last week, Wade won a blue ribbon in the kids’ “spuddy buddy” horticulture competition by fashioning a likeness of the three-time Super Bowl champ from potatoes.
Why not? Chiefs fans like Wade dig Mahomes.
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This spud’s for him.
Wade used three varieties — a red potato for the body, a tiny Yukon Gold for Mr. Potato’s head and a russet for the football in Tater’s hand.
“All grown in my garden,” Wade wrote in his entry.
He made (human) eyes with cloves and Mahomes’ trademark headband out of a coral bell leaf. The “arrowhead” on the headband is a zucchini seed.
He wasn’t allowed to use glue so he mashed everything together with thorns from a locust tree.
(Ever seen them? Those devilish spikes can grow up to eight inches and punch right through a tire.)
He used egg whites to glue on tiny pieces of broken egg shell to make a number 15 on Tater’s body and the football stitching.
But the crowning glory?
“I think the hair just makes it,” said Wade’s grandmother, Patty Lambert. “He wanted to make the hair out of corn silk. It’s dried corn silk off the field corn.”
Now, corn silk is long, shiny and, well, silky. When corn dries in the field the silk darkens but doesn’t curl. And Tater needed those signature Mahomes curls.
So Wade and his mom figured out how to curl that silk by dampening it, wrapping it tight around skewers and letting it dry.
“And it just made those ringlets so perfect,” said Lambert.
Wade, who is entering fourth grade, comes from a family of Chiefs fans. “I was raised in Kansas City so I’m loyal to everything Kansas City,” said Lambert, who posted photos of her grandson’s achievement on her Facebook page
Wade has watched the Chiefs win three Super Bowls with Mahomes, she said.
“He’s always focused on ‘number one-five, number one-five,’” so it wasn’t surprising that he chose to create a little buddy that looked like the quarterback, she said.
“Our little school at Purdin doesn’t have football, but my little Wade, he’s a little athlete. He plays baseball and basketball and soccer, anything with a ball. But since we don’t have football he just watches on TV and plays in the yard with his dad.”
Wade scored his first blue ribbon of the summer last month at the Linn County Fair, where he showed a bucket calf, an orphan he fed by bottle (called a bucket), then weaned.
She’s a pretty little Angus, 250 pounds and 3 months old.
Wade named her Taylor Swift.
His brother, too young yet to compete, has a bucket calf, too.
It’s named Travis Kelce.
“Taylor got to make it to the fair,” said Lambert. “She’s been released. She and the other heifers are out in the pasture. They’ll hang out until she’s old enough to breed and then Wade will have the start of his own herd.
“I guess he needs to keep this Chiefs theme going. We’re gonna have to get some more names to name them.”
She mentioned that Wade also tied for first at the county fair in the crowing contest with one of his roosters.
“It didn’t have an athletic name. It was named Hollywood,” she said.
Um, about that name?
Wade’s grandma forgot about Hollywood Brown.
He’s no small potatoes in Chiefs Kingdom, either.
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