This is a phrase that comes to me every year in the autumn. My son, now thirteen, seems to think he is
strong enough to carry the world. But,
let’s have a reality check. This is not the philosophical world we are speaking
of here. It’s much more serious. It’s pumpkins!
Ever since my daughter visited
her first pumpkin patch with her kindergarten class, the phrase “If you can’t
carry it, you can’t have it” has been the measure by which we pick our
pumpkins. Even though I was along that
year for that all-important rite of childhood passage, many of the mothers were
not. The kindergarten teachers were very wise. This system saved the teachers
from lugging huge pumpkins around for their small charges.
Little did I know that because of that first trip, pumpkin picking
would become an annual event. We have
visited many different patches over the years, changing locations as one, and
then another, went out of business. I
guess small family patches just don’t make the money to justify replanting year
after year.
I still miss visiting one patch
in particular. It was planted by an older gentleman and grew in a field down a
back road on the way to the lake. He grew pumpkins, gourds, and Indian
corn. He sold what he could, because he
really enjoyed the kids of all ages visiting his farm, and fed what he didn’t
sell to his cows the rest of the year.
He judged a pumpkin’s price more by the smile it brought to a child’s
face than the actual size. One year we
went to buy his pumpkins but noticed the big, round, orange sign wasn’t hung
out by the road. When I pulled into the familiar roadway, his daughter met our
car and informed us that no pumpkins had been planted that year. Her father had grown ill and hadn’t been well
enough to tend the fields. She said her
father was worried that the children he had sold pumpkins to for so long would
be disappointed. I was sad but I
understood. We thought it unfair that
our tradition had been disturbed. I’m sure he thought it was unfair, too.
This is the second year visiting
our current patch. It has a much more
commercial atmosphere, but we still get to pick our own pumpkins right off the
vines out in fields reached by jumping up on one of the several long, flat, hay
covered trailers pulled by field tractor. Over the years we have learned the art
of pumpkin picking. One must carry a
sharp knife to cut the vines and it helps to have good strong gloves because
the pumpkin stems have tiny thorns.
We always buy at least five pumpkins. One medium sized pumpkin goes on the mantle
in the living room with pretty dried leaves and a horn of plenty filled with
gourds and corn stalks and fall colored flowers. Another large specimen is to display
on the porch, welcoming guests and family to the house. Two are chosen by the
kids, with their own specifications, to carve and the last one I usually carry
to my place of work to decorate my desk.
The debate over pumpkins, as I say, is serious. The trip takes a minimum of three hours. There is just so much to be considered. The
right size and shape of each pumpkin, the right color and length of the still-attached,
weathered vine and for the ones to be carved; there has to be a perfect “face”
side. We choose and turn and lift and scrutinize and debate the pros and cons
of many pumpkins before we settle on the ones to take home.
Some people just go for the
hayride and for other things sold at the fruit stand, bakery and ice cream
parlor that are all part of the patch enterprise. We are continually amazed with people who
lack the ability to choose a perfect pumpkin.
Too many soft, bruised and deformed pumpkins are chosen, bought and
carried home. Some are lazily and quickly picked from piles of pumpkins on the
side of the road that lead to the main entrance. And at least once a year we
see a small child struggling under the weight of his or her enormous choice;
dropping it, and then crying.
My
children, considering themselves pumpkin picking experts, just look at each
other and shake their heads and repeat the time-tested piece of wisdom: “If you
can’t carry it, you can’t have it.”
