Saturday, October 10, 2009

Halloween is a Comin'


Dear Lucy,
Holloween is a comin, there's dancin' tonight!
Ahem.
Well, not yet. But Suzie came home yesterday with all these cool pumpkins to carve. They are quite large and strangely shaped.

In another week or so, I shall take her to a "sincere pumpkin patch" as Linus said in "The Great Pumpkin" and Anne used to say every year.

We would drive south to Mount Vernon which is mostly agricultural, and just off the freeway was and is a huge pumpkin patch complete with a corn maze.

Anne and I would go every year and pick out pumpkins--sure you can get them at the grocery store, but what's the fun in that?--and then, God bless her, she would go to the patch after Halloween when the farmer was just going to mow the left overs {{gasp!}} under, and get them for free.

Bunches of them.

Lots and lots of them.

Like we would ever eat all that pumpkin.

But, it was free and when Anne saw free, she saw abundance.

One year we put them in a closet in a spare room we didn't heat because they say keep them in a cool, dark, place.

They rotted.

Then, we put them in barrels of saw dust in the garage.

They rotted.

Then, we put them on lounge chairs--hey why not be comfortable?--and covered them with sleeping bags in the garage.

They rotted.

One year we offered them to friends. But after forcing Zucchini on them all summer from Anne's abundant garden, they were less than enthused about taking 10 pumpkins each.

People started to avoid us.

I begged her not to take so many every year.

I pleaded.

I threatened.

She died.

Problem solved.

--Kathy

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