Flamingo Street Pumpkin Contest

You’d think after sixty years I wouldn’t remember much about growing up during those magical seven years we spent on Flamingo Street, but some things about that time I will never forget.

Each year we lived on Flamingo, we had participated in the annual pumpkin-growing contest, and this being our fourth year, we knew we were going to win.

We were mistaken.

Not only did we not win, but I can’t – and won’t – forget the results of that contest. Dear Reader, what happened influenced my life like few events have since.

Hank had won the contest two years in a row. Goofy Steve won the year before last, and Neighbor Thomas won it last year. So naturally, my three brothers, the sister, and I felt like it was our time to win the largest pumpkin contest.

As most folks know, you don’t start growing pumpkins on the first of October. You start around the Fourth of July. That’s when you plant the seed. You till the ground and fertilize it, carefully water it every other day, weed the garden area, and let the vines do what vines do.

This year, we knew we would win because the pumpkin we grew was larger than any one we had ever seen. We’d pinched the other pumpkins on the vine so all the energy could be funneled into one ginormous pumpkin.

It was so large none of us could even pick it up!

The contest started a week before Halloween, and it had fairly simple rules.

First, you put your pumpkin out by the mailbox. Second, the people on Flamingo and any visitors could drive by and look at the pumpkins. Then they would select the one they thought was the largest and vote by putting a piece of paper with their name on it in the mailbox.

Sure, people could cheat by putting random names on pieces of paper and stuffing their mailbox full of votes. But we kids, being out of school in the afternoon and the weekend, took turns sitting by the mailbox with our pumpkin to make sure everything was fair and square.

And that’s the reason none of us could believe who won that year.

My three brothers, the sister, and I had grown the largest pumpkin Flamingo had ever seen. It was so large none of us could pick it up, so we had to roll it up the hill from the garden, around the house, and down the hill to our mailbox. It took almost half a day to do it, but it was worth it because that pumpkin was almost as tall as our mailbox! A quick walk up and down Flamingo made it obvious. We would win in a landslide.

We could not have been more wrong.

We all took turns sitting by the mailbox every day for almost a week, so we knew the votes we had were legitimate. We also took time away from our post to walk up and down the street and look at the competition.

We went all the way down to the very beginning of Flamingo and looked at Down-the-Street Bully Brad’s entry. He sat each day next to his mailbox with the smallest pumpkin we had ever seen. It was barely larger than a grapefruit.

We laughed.

Not just at him, but at his little miniature pumpkin. We knew he wouldn’t get a single vote.

Oddly, he just sat there in his chair. He didn’t react to us laughing at him or his silly little pumpkin, but we didn’t give that much thought.

That is, until the votes were counted the day before Halloween.

Last year’s winner, Goofy Steve, received seven votes. Bubba Hank received five. We received twelve.

But Down-the-Street Bully Brad won with thirty votes!

None of us knew how he did it, but we were sure he had cheated. We accused him of cheating and laughed at him for months about his little pumpkin. And unlike his usual Bully Brad behavior, he never reacted to us making fun of him or his pumpkin.

We could not have been more wrong.

A couple of months later, we were still talking about how he had cheated when someone overheard us at Sam’s Drug Store while we were sipping on Coca-Cola floats.

One of the patrons walked over to us and asked, “Didn’t you kids read his sign?”

We looked at each other.

“What sign?”

None of us knew Bully Brad had a sign out by his mailbox that year, a sign he held up whenever people drove by.

THIS IS THE BEST I CAN DO.

We also didn’t know his dad had been out of work for the last three months.

But everybody in town knew.

Somehow, they also knew Bully Brad had gone to the feed-and-seed store and asked for seeds so he could plant his own pumpkin.

That year, that little pumpkin truly was the best he could do.

When I learned how Bully Brad had grown the smallest pumpkin on Flamingo Street and yet still won the largest pumpkin contest, suddenly I felt like the bully of Flamingo. It’s a feeling I’ve never forgotten.

You never know what people are struggling with behind closed doors. My careless thoughts and actions from all those years ago still follow me today, and they carry with them a warning: Sometimes the very best somebody can do, although to me it may seem wholly inadequate, is indeed the very best they can do.

And nobody should be judged negatively for doing their best.