Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Today’s Jack-O-Lantern, Tomorrow’s Roadkill
“Full frontal lobotomy!” the kids yelled. The family joke: we’re performing brain surgery on poor hapless gourds.By Bob Wire, 10-29-09
I don't think I'd eat any candy I got from this house.
“You got to caaaaarve that punkin, you gotta caaaaaarve that punkin…” I’m belting out these words to the tune of Southern Culture on the Skids’ “Carve That Possum” when the kids get off the school bus. Their friends, doing their best Kilroy-Was-Here impression, watch me from the bus windows as it pulls away.
“Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” says Speaker, stamping a foot. At 11 years of age, she is highly susceptible to mortification. Rusty remains stoic.
“Sorry, kiddo. I’m just full of…Halloween cheer!” I whip a ten-inch chef’s knife out of my coat. “Do you know what night this is?”
Rusty gives me his best baleful stare. “Goat sacrifice?”
“No, but close. It’s pumpkin carving night! I’ve already picked out some pumpkins for you guys.”
Speaker rolls her eyes, folds her arms and cocks a hip, all very tween behavior. “Please tell me you didn’t get the pumpkins on sale like last year? Those things were gross, Dad.”
I replace the knife in my coat, and notice that the old lady across the street from the bus stop is closing her curtains. “Oh, come on. They were perfectly fine after you cut away the rotten parts. But don’t worry, these are all shiny and whole, ready to be butchered.”
“Ugh,” is her only response, as we head back to the house.
Later, after dinner, I spread newspapers out across the kitchen table. I laid out our tools: two large stainless steel bowls, three long boning knives, a paring knife, two serving spoons, a growler of Kettle House IPA and one glass, a set of miniature carving tools, three kitchen towels, a box of toothpicks, and a rockabilly Halloween compilation CD (my favorite song: “No Costume, No Candy!”).
I cranked up the music and Speaker showed me the design she wanted on her pumpkin. “I found it in a magazine,” she said, holding a torn-out page. It featured a pumpkin that had been carved by Michaelango, a freakishly detailed depiction of a witch on a broom flying in front of a full moon. It was done by shaving the rind away from the surface of the pumpkin, revealing sections of various depth, giving the illustration dimension.
“Jesus Christ, Frida Kahlo, do you know how long this will take? I only have one jug of beer. Tell you what…you trace the design onto the pumpkin, and I’ll see what we can do. But first we have to do…what?” I spread my hands, raised my eyebrows, and looked from kid to kid.
“Full frontal lobotomy!” they both yelled. It’s become our family joke, that we’re performing brain surgery on these poor hapless gourds. I used the short boning knife to cut off the tops of the skulls, er, pumpkins, and the kids dug in with the serving spoons.
“Look,” said Speaker, succumbing to her baser instincts. “I’m scooping out his brain!” She plopped a stringy orange spoonful of goop into a bowl.
“Yeah! That’s the spirit! One or two more scoops and you’ll turn him into a Republican. Hey, Rusty, you’re going full native on me?” He’d spurned the spoon, electing to dig in with both hands.
“Yesss, mah-stah,” he intoned. “I’ll have the patient ready for transformation soon! Bwah ha ha ha ha!” He dumped a double handful of gourd glop into the bowl with a splat. His delivery was so good that I checked him for a hump.
Soon, the kids had both pumpkins hollowed out, ready for the scalpel. They traced their designs with Sharpies while I separated the seeds from the brain matter. We love the roasted seeds; to me, it’s really the only tangible payoff from this whole jack-o-lantern business. I mean, on November 1st, our lovingly-carved pumpkins will be in the street, smashed and splattered like a heckler at Altamont. So we’ve learned not to become too attached.
Speaker has thankfully backed off from her Louvre-quality design, and settled on a curvy, stylized face. As I begin to cut the outline of the mouth, she shouts, “NO!” I withdraw the knife. “What?” I ask.
“I’m going to put lipstick there,” she says. And eyelashes. And rouge. Oh. It’s a girl jack-o-lantern. I should have known from the lack of a stem.
I turn to Rusty, who has drawn two X’s for eyes, and a huge, frowning mouth. He’s already cut out the mouth, and used the piece he cut out to form a tongue, which lolls to the side. He’s piling gooey brains back into the pumpkin, and it spills out the mouth onto the table. He stands back to survey his work.
“What the hell is that supposed to be?” I ask. The tableau is truly disturbing.
He shrugs. “It’s you, when you come home from Poker Night.”
God, I love Halloween.
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I'm not wanting to be prudish, but the picture here is just too crudish, even for a letch like you. Funny, sure, but this one crosses the line. You'd not put a moon shot up.