Halloween used to be so simple.
Once upon a time, it meant finding an unwitting pumpkin, cutting two triangles in it for eyes, a triangle for a nose and a jagged smile. Add a candle and, Bam!, you’re done.
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Halloween used to be so simple.
Once upon a time, it meant finding an unwitting pumpkin, cutting two triangles in it for eyes, a triangle for a nose and a jagged smile. Add a candle and, Bam!, you’re done.
Nowadays, you have to be a Van Gogh or Michelangelo to carve a pumpkin. And, I try. Oh, how I try.
My first effort several years ago was a clever cat face and I did pretty good at the beginning. Kitty had pretty slanted eyes, a well-formed nose and the outline of a muzzle. Then, the knife slipped while I was carving the mouth. Kitty ended up with a cleft lip.
The following year, I saw a very creative pumpkin sculpture with a fairly simple face that expressed surprise and a wide mouth from which issued a mass of pumpkin guts and seeds. The effect was great for Halloween. A mortified pumpkin scared sick by the season.
I carved a nice one and had it sitting on the front porch. For a few days, I loved my creation. Then the pumpkin guts began to decay. Even in early fall, rotting vegetative flesh draws flies, I discovered. And, the visual effect got entirely too real. My pumpkin guts turned into black, slimy pumpkin vomit.
Before long, the neighborhood chipmunks, possums, mice, goblins or ghouls (who knows) came creeping around in the dead of night and made off with the seeds. What was left was ghastly. Let me tell you — dinner guests do not want to be greeted at the door by the sight of a moldy, pumpkin carcass.
I could go to a big box store and buy a ceramic or styro-foam pumpkin for the front porch. But, somehow, that seems like cheating.
It’s not Halloween unless harried adults are hunched over kitchen tables, carving up innocent gourds. I think it has something to do with a combination of sharp utensils wielded with slippery fingers coated with pumpkin goo. The suspense builds as the night’s butchery goes on. Who will come out, unscathed, with the least loss of blood?
My money is on the pumpkin.
JD Walker is a magazine editor, published author, freelancer and former reporter with The Courier-Tribune. She lives in Randolph County and continues to write on her favorite topics, which include gardening, business and government affairs.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Oh, the horror and frustration of Halloween