How We Celebrate Hallowe'en Around Here--The Pumpkin Roll

After I moved to this quirky town, the natives told me about certain seasonal rituals. The spring Bacchanalia is known as Blossom Time—a three-day party that happens every Memorial Day weekend.

That first Memorial Day, I found out that this town knows how to throw a party.

The fall ritual is known as The Pumpkin Roll, and it happens—well—it’s a secret.

“What do you mean, it’s a secret?” I asked, instantly intrigued.

“Well,” my informant said, “It’s unsanctioned.”

“Unsanctioned? Why? What is it? Who does it?” I persisted.

She leaned closer. “On a secret night around Hallowe’en time, the junior and senior classes at the high school bring hundreds of pumpkins to the top of Grove Hill, smash them on the roadway, and then slide down on the pumpkin guts.”

“They do not!” I said.

“They do.  It makes a huge mess.”

            “That’s awful,” I said, thinking, That’s awesome! “Um. Where do they get the pumpkins?”

“They steal them. They call it ‘pumpkining.’ Around here, you have to watch your pumpkins.” 

I needed the down-low, so I got online.

According to Wikipedia, the tradition began in 1909 as a “dump and run,” but has evolved into a more elaborate event, beginning with a party in a barn. In 2005, a record 22,000 pumpkins were smashed on the hill, which made me wonder who counted them. Police interference has had little effect over the years, though students caught stealing pumpkins are arrested. There’s considerable underage drinking, numerous injuries, but there have been only three deaths. 

It sounded like sort of a local “running of the bulls.” Planned by teenagers.

I am amazed, delighted, and appalled, all at once. How could such an event keep happening, at a time when helicopter parents drive their children to the bus stop?

Me, I was determined to be on scene for the roll.

As the trees turned to red and gold, I noticed that the local greenhouse offered “Pumpkin insurance.” If you bought a pumpkin from them, and it was stolen, they would replace it. Once.

At the annual October cleanup, the ladies on the Beautification Committee were already complaining about stolen pumpkins.

“They stole them right off my porch,” one woman said. “That’s twice now. I’m not buying more.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “Um. When’s the pumpkin roll?”

They stared at me. “It’s a secret,” they said.

“How can I find out? I—ah—want to know when it’s safe to put my pumpkins out again.”

“Maybe you could ask somebody at the high school,” they say, edging away from me.

When I left for San Diego for the World Fantasy Convention, I warned my husband, “Keep an eye out for the pumpkin roll.”

“When is it?”

“It’s a secret.”

Naturally, the pumpkin roll happened while I was in San Diego. There was a photo in the local paper. Somebody tipped the media, obviously.

So I’m down at the salon and Hannah is cutting my hair and I mention the pumpkin roll.

“I was there!” she said. “It was awesome, because nobody got hurt this year. I always go and try and look out for the kids.”

“Have you…actually participated?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “When I was in high school. I got pretty badly hurt.”

“What?!”

“I was walking back up the hill, and these guys were coming down and wiped me out and I hit my head on the pavement and they had to take me away in an ambulance,” Hannah said cheerfully.

“And this is…a fond memory for you?” I ask cautiously.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I was the only one sober. Doesn’t it just figure?”

It does.

Obsessive Gardening

I’ve been gardening obsessively ever since I moved into the stone cottage by the falls. What took me twenty years to accomplish at my old house I seem to be  determined to install during one relentlessly rainy spring and summer.  It’s like I want to get to where I’ve been in order to settle in.

And yet, I’m not trying to recreate my old garden in this new place. It’s different—different exposure, different microclimate, different soil.  Back at my old place, it was all clay and shale. Twenty years of digging out rocks, and I still couldn’t sink a shovel without hitting one.

Here, the soil is rich and dark, like chocolate cake. Don Burlibaugh down at the Historical Society says my neighborhood used to be a swamp—“full of cougars, bears, and malaria.” Maybe so, but, it left behind a fine layer of topsoil. My next door neighbor says she used to grow tomatoes as big as pumpkins.

Every place I’ve lived, I’ve tried to grow blueberries—and failed. Here, I will try again, in acidic swamp soil. I plant my eight bushes, and hope, and compete with the birds for the occasional berry.

I have more room to play. Where my vegetable garden at my old house cowered on the east side of the house, here I have a large plot rototilled in the sunny back yard. Watermelon? Why not? Cantaloupe, too. Carrots and beets, though I’m the only one who’ll eat them. I’m trying different things.

So out goes the barberry and arborvitae, the pachysandra and English ivy. In goes the perennial border, the woodland garden, the herb garden. All the plants I love—roses, peonies, iris, Lenten rose, hydrangeas, salvia, poppies, trillium, and jack in the pulpit. And some new acquaintances—like Solomon’s seal and summersweet. I ruffle the beds with hostas and plant a climber next to the fence.

The owners of the local greenhouse smile and rub their hands together when they see me coming, knowing they can make another payment on the boat.

The physical labor is a good counterpoint to the cerebral work of writing. It frees the mind. My shovel bites into the dirt, and my mind tangles and untangles story.

“When?” my husband asks. “When can we sit on the porch and drink adult beverages?”

“Soon,” I say. “Soon.”

Lessons Learned in Real Estate

Every time I buy a house, I learn something.

I once bought a house next to a tiny creek, and learned that tiny creeks don’t always stay that way.

I bought a house next to the airport, where we couldn’t hold a conversation with the windows open. Or out on the patio.

Friend, diving to the ground and covering her ears: What IS that?

Me, looking around: What?

That one, I should have predicted. Growing up, I lived in a house where the backyard ran down to the railroad tracks. We were on the wrong side, no doubt.

Friend, in shaking house: Is that a TRAIN?

Me: What?

In the summer, the sparks from the wheels used to cause brush fires. Plus there were big holes in the yard with crayfish living at the bottom of them. I’m not making this up.

Buy a house with a leaky basement, and your next house will be built on a slab.

Buy a house on a slab, and you find out there’s no place to put things. And no place to go during the tornado warning. I’m a Midwest, girl, and huddling in the bathtub doesn’t do it for me. I imagine soaring over the rooftops in my soaking tub, gripping the porcelain on either side.

Buy a house on a busy road, and you’ll vow that your next place will be on a cul-de-sac. Or in the middle of nowhere.

Buy a house in the middle of nowhere, and you’ll regret that you have to get into the car to buy coffee.

Buy a house in the suburbs, and you won’t know your neighbors.

Buy a house in a small town, and you may get to know them too well.

Buy a house with a huge yard, and your next place will be a condo. Where you’ll pine after the flower borders you left behind.

Buy a house with a leaky roof, and you’ll crawl all over the roof of your next house, looking for heaven knows what, because you’re not going to make the same mistake again. Meanwhile, you overlook the faltering septic system.

You see, none of the lessons learned will ever do you any good, because there are myriad more mistakes to be made.

Blossom Time

Our new home by the Falls hasn’t been locked in seven years. Our first clue was when we made arrangements with the sellers to take possession. “Leave the keys at the realtor’s,” we suggested. “We’ll pick them up there.”

“We’ll just leave the house unlocked and put the key on the table,” they countered.

“Um, no,” we said, feeling appallingly big city. “We’re not comfortable with that.”

They did it anyway. We found the house unlocked, and one key on the hook in the kitchen—to the side door.  None of the other doors matched—and none of them had keys.

So I called a locksmith. Wiley was his name. When I explained the situation, he said, “Is there anything on the key you’ve got? Any writing? Numbers or letters?”

I squinted at the key. “There’s a C,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. “I know what you got there. I can be there in an hour.”

Wiley was big, and he wore a bomber jacket with leather sleeves and a bluetooth device in his ear. I took him from door to door and he’d pop out the locking mechanisms and pop them back in, try the knobs, slide the bolts around.  Clearly, the man knew his way around a lock.

“I’ll need to order some parts,” he said, quoting me a price. “Place my order beginning of next week so I can order everything at once.”

“We need a painter, too,” I said. “And a chimney sweep.”

“For any of the trades, ask down at the hardware store,” Wiley said. “They know everybody, who’s good, and who to stay away from. You’ll probably have to wait for the best ones. If they say they can come right away, they’re probably no good.” He paused, then grinned sheepishly. “Guess I came right away, though.”

Wiley said he was born and raised in the village. He’d been in the locksmith business for twenty-nine years. “Wasn’t a family business, I started it myself. My father was a harness-maker. My mother still lives up the hill there.” He waved vaguely toward Main St. “This is a nice place—a quiet, conservative little town, except at Blossom Time.”

“Blossom time?” I was instantly intrigued, as I always am by secret lives.

“People go kinda wild at blossom time,” Wiley said. “Memorial Day weekend. There’s two parades—a little one with the Boy Scouts and the American Legion that goes up to the Evergreen Cemetery. That’s on Monday. And a big one on Sunday that goes down Main Street. People are five deep on the sidewalks, and there’s hot air balloons going off at the high school. The funeral home throws a big outdoor party in their yard and the whole town’s invited. You see people walking around with their plastic cups.”

He paused, looking out at me from under his brows. “Anything can happen at Blossom Time. Then, after the weekend’s over, they go back to being their regular selves.”

Blossom time—a rite of spring after a long winter. I think I’m going to like it here.