This Sonoma County pillow fighting contest set a Guinness World Record

Imagine two people facing each other, straddling a greased steel pole suspended over a mud pit on a hot summer day. Spectators surround them, chanting their names, as they prepare to fight until their opponent falls into the mud.

The weapon of choice: Pillows. Soggy, mud-drenched pillows.

This was a scene you may remember from the Kenwood pillow fights, a Fourth of July tradition that lasted 40 years, from 1966 to 2006.

Also known as the World Pillow Fighting Championships, the small-town event made the Guinness World Records for being the longest-running pillow fighting contest.

As The Press Democrat put it in 1969: “All you need is a mud hole, a pipe seared with goo, saturated pillows and two fellows (or girls) willing to give their all for the title.”

Sponsored by the Kenwood Fireman’s Association, the competition was a huge event on July Fourth. Over the years, the community would also celebrate the holiday with games, a parade, a foot race, a chili cook-off and a barbecue.

Celebrities even joined in the fun. Comedians and brothers Dick and Tommy Smothers, who is a local winegrower, competed in the pillow fights during the 1980s.

“The secret is not strength, like most people believe. It’s actually balance,” longtime pillow fighting commissioner Richard Gulson said in 1996.

The annual event garnered national attention and drew thousands of people, eventually becoming too big for the quiet town along Highway 12 between Santa Rosa and Sonoma.

“It got too big for the community. We tried to keep it a family event, but it grew and got a life of its own,” Tony Ghisla, a member of the Kenwood Fireman’s Association, told The Press Democrat in 2006. An estimated 10,000 spectators came that year.

See photos in the gallery above of July Fourth pillow fights in Kenwood over the years.