It’s Pumpkin Time Again!

Pumpkin carving sure has come a long way since we lived on that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo, but one thing hasn’t changed: you can have a whole lotta fun with pumpkins…and get into a whole lot of trouble at the same time. I’ll explain.

For those seven magical years spent growing up on Flamingo, my three brothers, The Sister, and I carved pumpkins for display on our front porch. Each year we’d visit Pete’s Pumpkin Patch, pick out the ones we thought were the best, and then return home to start carving. Mom’s kitchen knives were too big, but Dad’s rusty pocketknife was the perfect size and always super sharp. It cut through the toughest pumpkin as easy as a hot knife goes through butter. And yes, this was the same knife he used to clean fish we caught out of the lake behind our house and dig splinters out of our fingers.

It wasn’t the carving part that got us into trouble. It was the scooping out and throwing the pumpkin guts at each other that did. Still, it was an October tradition: pick a pumpkin then scoop out and throw the pumpkin guts at each other. Using our imagination, we’d carve scary faces and then place candles inside. At night, we’d light all the candles and put the lids back on top. We’d spend hours outside watching the flickering candles as they cast the scary images on everything. For us, nothing said Halloween more than the smell of candles cooking pumpkins on the front porch.

Some sixty years later.

Like I said, pumpkin carving sure has changed a lot since we lived on Flamingo. No more do you have to guess what scary thing to carve, using real candles for illumination is a thing of the past, and sadly, Dad’s rusty pocketknife is long gone. Nowadays you can buy pumpkin carving kits that include five choices of face stencils and an assortment of carving tools. Sadly, the smell of candle-burnt pumpkin on the front porch has been replaced by a small battery-powered flickering light.

Last year I bought an electric-powered carving knife that threw more pumpkin on my granddaughters and me than my brothers and I did flinging pumpkin guts back on Flamingo. This year has been different. Instead of carving, we decided to use stencils and paint our scary scenes on the pumpkins. They turned out so well I decided to make a decoration outside of the kindergarten room where I help teach fifteen of the most wonderful 5- and 6-year-olds in the world.

This year our display is Snoopy the Flying Ace piloting his doghouse, Woodstock, and fifteen baby pumpkin Woodstocks. With Halloween falling on a Friday, the kids will each get to take their baby Woodstock home to display on their front porch. No carving, no burning candles, but still a whole lot of fun.

This story was going to end with the paragraph above – until I went to the basement looking through those last couple of Halloween boxes from long ago for things to donate or throw away. There, in the bottom of the last box, wrapped up in a tattered, brown rag was Dad’s old pocketknife – still super sharp. Perhaps next year I’ll try that carving thing once again.

Thanks, Dad, for the October memory. And thanks for the knife.