Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1910 — "SOME PUMPKINS" [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

"SOME PUMPKINS"

SOMEWHERE down the road the engine stopped to get a drink. There was toothing in it for the passengers, the day being Sunday and the lid well clamped down, even in the Ozark country, ■where the moon is said to shine in the darkness occasionally. Nevertheless the passengers got something worth while stopping for. What they got was a picture. It was a simple composition with a background of crimson autumnal foliage, a weatherstained log house in the middle distance, well screened in woodbine and trumpet creeper, the frost-nipped remains of an old-fashioned garden and —right in the middle foreground, not a stone’s throw from the track —the solitary figure. He stood beside the squat gatepost, just as if he bad been painted there a gpod half century ago, a cob pipe in his mouth and a somewhat tattered straw hat pushed well back from his florid brow and straight gray hair. His lean arms embraced, as far as human arms could reach, a mammoth pumpkin that reposed on the gatepost, and Into the side of the yellow rind he had cut, “Prize-winner, 216 pd" "I thought he’d be there,” one of the passengers laughed. “He hasn’t done a thing but flaunt that pumpkin at the passengers the past four days since he got it back from the county fair. You know it isn’t easy to raise big fellows like that in these Ozark hills. It takes rich bottom soil to make ’em grow to any considerable size, and the Ozark farmer needs his little bottom patches for something besides show fruit. That old chap got some of the best pumpkin seed that ever was brought into market and he’s been at ’em ever since. That 216-pounder did actually capture the prize in a certain Missouri county, but there was a pumpkin shown at the Merchants’ Exchange in. St. Louis that would have broken the old Ozark farmer’s heart. It was the great achievement of Tom Powell, who has been raising big pumpkins a good many years and who supplied the seed from which that one great hill pumpkin was developed. It took a threehorse team to haul thirty pumpkins to St Louis for the display. The combined weight of the load, exclusive of the wagon and driver, was something over 5,000 pounds, and the largest of the pumpkins tipped the beam at 237, the heaviest pumpkin ever brought to St Louis. It was converted into 160 succulent pies. The demand for pumpkin has not increased in proportion to the population’s increase. In the days of our grandmothers canned things were almost unknown. And there was the tradition that in the fall, from the middle of October to Christmas, there must be a long row of pumpkin pies on the pantry shelf every Saturday night. For a moderate-sized family ten pies would suffice, but there was many a housewife who made her tired boast, “I’ve baked two dozen this morning, and I do hope there will be enough left for Monday dinner.” In the old days, the pumpkin was put to another use. It was the basis for a very delicious soup—strange as this may seem. EVen now in the markets of Paris there is the custom of crowning King Pumpkin the last Saturday id September. The largest and Shapeliest is elected kliig, and there is a regular ceremonial, an hour of the afternoon being given up to the parade through stalls and adjoining streets of the market, the trades people in costume and the pumpkin adorned with a gorgeous crown of tinsel and imitation jewels. When the parade is over the fruit is uncrowned, cut into sections and these auctioned off to the highest bidder, to be taken home and made up into soup.

Long before the Thanksgiving season of pie baking, many pumpkins have been* diverted from their normal purpose of food and have served the merrymakers at Hallowe’en, made over into jack-o’-lanterns, with grinning or sorrowful countenances. Centuries ago in Europe there was another kind of jack-o’-lantern, the marsh fire or will-o'-the-wisp, elf-fire or whatever you wish to call it, that was frequently seen in low, marshy places at night, flitting about like tiny lanterns in the gloom. When these phosphorescent lights appeared at the time of All Saints’ day they were said to be the souls of sinners that had escaped from purgatory and returned to earth to beg their former friends to pray for the remission of their sins. Whether the pumpkin’dnHtation of the marsh light originated among the peasants of Italy or the negroes of our own southern states, is still a mooted question. At first they were all sorrowful faces, befitting the counterpart of the soul that is suffering the consequences of a wicked life. But once upon a .time an embryo sculptor made a mistake in the carving of a pumpkin mouth, causing the corners to turn up instead of down, and the effect was so jolly and comical that all who saw this spirit came to the conclusion that either the sins had been forgiven or the gate to purgatory had been slammed in his face and he need not return. Since that time it has been assumed by the Halloween hostess that sins are actually pardoned and departed spirits are happy, for the round, rather flat pumpkin that can be made to grin is the one most in demand. Italy lays claim to the origin of the jack-o’-lantern and some time ago the botanists of Europe laid entire claim to the pumpkin itself, asserting that it was an imported product in America. This libel was given the lie in a little while by the who was

in no humor to be robbed of his annual Thanksgiving pie. Pumpkins were grown in the rich alluvial Soil along the Missouri river long before the white man invaded the interior of the continent, and in-the cliff dwellings of Mancos Canyon,, Ohio, that were abandoned even before the coming of Columbus, perfectly preserved pumpkin seeds have been found by the excavators, in hermetically sealed jars. This fact, is of no particular interest to any but the botanist, and the archaeoligist; yet it is a source of gratification to us to know that we can eat our national pie without returning thanks to any other country than our own.

In the Pumpkin Field.