As I plunged in the knife, I could feel and hear the skin pop and the hard shell break under the sharp, piercing blade. There was no other sound but the “snicker-snack” of the slicing as I enlarged the hole…around the top, a slight ooze following the slick steel. I was careful not to slip and cut myself, too. It was difficult to hold the cold, damp head and work the knife.
When the blade completed the circuit and arrived at the original puncture, I carefully lifted the newly separated dome and peered into the cavity below. I could smell the sharp sweetness and see the stringy, mushy innards clinging to the sides. Laying aside my knife, I pushed back my shirtsleeves and plunged my bare hand into the gory dampness. I squeezed a handful and felt the tendrils and the flesh and the hard seeds squirt through my fingers. Filling my hand again, I pulled out as much as I could and dropped it on the outspread newspapers on the table. Splot!
I love carving jack-o-lanterns. It’s a Fall ritual I have enjoyed since I was too small to attack a pumpkin with a knife myself and only watched my grandfather or my father create the yearly face of horror. I don’t think I saw a “friendly” face on a jack-o-lantern until I was an adult. I still am not a fan. It just seems wrong to me to see a smiling face shining into the night dedicated to ghosts and goblins. I always try for the ugliest, scariest jack-o-lantern possible.
Halloween is my father’s favorite holiday. He and Mom used to dress in costume and sit on their front porch to greet the Trick-or-Treaters. It really threw some of the little kids to go to their pastor’s house and find a couple of really ugly old characters in rocking chairs on the porch!
He and I passed along our pumpkin carving to my sons. Some of my favorite memories are watching the boys play in the pumpkin “guts”…to their mother’s disgust. When they were old enough to be able to carve the rinds themselves, we started them with special pumpkin-carving blades—not sharp, but serrated so they would cut through the shells. It required some hard work to saw through those thick skins, but they were determined to try to make faces scarier than the one’s Dad was creating.
I have had the pleasure of a carving session with my older grandson. Soon it will be time to introduce his younger brother to the ceremony. That should be fun. Their dad and mom have been carrying on the tradition, too.
We have some good pumpkins sitting on the deck. It’s still a bit too early to transform some of them into our front porch guardians for this year. Next week, the week of Halloween, is supposed to be colder, maybe with a snow flurry or two. A good time to perform a late night craniotomy. Bwahahahaha!
