The Perfect Pumpkin

There is no such thing as the perfect pumpkin. As adults we know that but kids sure don't. They will spend hours hunting for that perfect pumpkin. If pumpkins were perfect they would all be made in a factory in China and each pumpkin would have a passed inspection sticker on it.
Pumpkins come in all sizes from little ones you could put in your shirt pocket to large robust ones that it takes both arms to cradle. I have no ideal what the little ones are used for. Christmas trees also come in all sizes but you don't see three inch trees on Christmas tree lots.
Dad was always the tree picker where mom was the mellon picker if you want to call a pumpkin a mellon. There is a big difference between the Christmas tree hunt and picking a pumpkin. Dad was the only one who had input about the tree. He wasted little time in his selection, usually picking the same kind of tree his friends picked and he was done with it. Mom on the other hand took her time with mellons of all kinds. I do not remember picking many pumpkins, but watermelon, I was a hell of a thumper. She would let me thump till she was finished talking to the other women in the store then she would always say " it's time to go, put that mellon in the basket ".
As a kid I wondered how the custom of carving pumpkins started, why didn't we carve watermelons instead of pumpkins? I watched lots of Peanuts Halloween specials where Linus sat among the pumpkins waiting for the Great Pumpkin that never came, but I could never figure out why people carved Jack O Lanterns. While growing up our house didn't have much of a tradition with pumpkins even on the one day of the year other people had pumpkins on their porch. If mom had set a pumpkin on our porch the pumpkin would have had a smile face. After all what kind of a person would be scared of a pumpkin ever if it had a scary face on it! Mom always knew best. She knew if we were to carve a Jack O lantern she would have to give us knives and she was not about to do that. The next thing we wanted to do was put a candle in the Jack O Lantern and that involved matches, those were out of the question. She was not about to let us burn down the house.
The tree business along with the pumpkin business is just one big racket. When the holiday is over out goes the tree or pumpkin and both make a mess. I have never met anyone who likes pumpkin pie and the only way to get rid of a Christmas tree is to give it to a South Austin good old boy who thinks if he sinks it in a body of water, he can go back the next year and catch a five pound bass, good luck!
Oh well, its really about the hunt not what you catch, the thrill of it all. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll write about picking the perfect Turkey. I do have some experience in that field and I am a little bit of Turkey myself.