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02/11: Frost and the Pumpkin
The first hard frost came late this year, on the 29th of October, just two days before Halloween. The cool settled, and left a frosty dew on everything. The sun returned though and sent the temperatures into the sixties for Halloween, the warmest we have seen. All the maples leaves had dropped from the trees, and with the extra week of extended daylight it meant we were trick or treating without jackets with leafless trees against a dark blue horizon in the west. There is a healthy respect for the holiday here in the North East, it is, I suppose because the weather and surroundings change so dramatically. Or, it could be that the setting is just right, this village has such a variety of architecture from the big Victorians, to the little farmhouses, to the little turn of the century train depot and caboose all standing in various states of repair, all of them tilting slightly askew. The lawns and sidewalks are all carpeted with dry rustling leaves.And so, in mid-October a secret kind of competition begins. There are the new-fangled decorations, enormous blow up pumpkins and styrofoam headstones spring up in front yards. Whispy ghosts are projected,and climb up the walls of area homes. But the traditionalists, such as myself, save their skills for the jack-o-lanterns. No longer content with simple shape faces, the neighbors are pulling out all the stops. Spurred on by morning shows and magazines people are enlisting templates, jigsaws, and drills. People eye each other's creations on their neighbor's front stoops in the last weeks of the month before picking up a knife and an ice-cream scoop. We were happy recipients of pumpkins from Mom's garden, and she confronted us with a challenge: she gave us a great big pumpkins, which was turned into our annual "death head", but she also gave us a "double pumpkin" which looked - well, rather obscene.
After a week or two of thought, Zoe and I sat down to slash and gut our gourds. There is no neat or pretty way to scoop a pumpkin, though you may enlist many and various kitchen utensils, it always comes down to plunging your hand in and pulling out stringy masses of seeds. I took the opportunity to grab Zoe's hand and feel the wet seeds slide around between our palms - it made her squeal. The double pumpkin was turned into "The Angry Conjoined Twins", which delighted plenty of people as it sat in front of our house. Now, though, frosts have touched the pumpkins and they are a little blackened around the tops. Slugs ooze through the jagged teeth. This is the time when nature really lends a hand to our artistry, and turns our whimsical faces into ghastly creations, aging before our eyes before they eventually fall in on themselves. Then we have to wait for good hard freeze to solidify the gloopy mass to scoop it up and cart it off to the compost pile.
