Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, September 24, 2022

Mountain View News September 24, 2022 

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Blood Drive 
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Location: Bloodmobile 
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Sunday, September 25, 2022 
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. 
Please visit RedCrossBlood.org and enter sponsor code: SMCC to schedule anappointment. 
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WALKING SIERRA MADRE - The Social Side 

by Deanne Davis 

Well, friends and neighbors, I started talking about pumpkins last week and I figured I’d just continue in 
a spooky, pumpkin-y, Halloweenish frame of mind. If you haven’t started working on your scarecrow, you 
better get going. Think dark and scary thoughts… 

“Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because 
it was All Hallows Eve.” Ray Bradbury 

“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half of what you see.” Edgar Allan Poe“I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.” The Criminologist,
Rocky Horror Show 

A HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY 

Halloween is almost upon us and 
those pumpkins that decorate porches 
and walls, with their happy faces, grotesque 
faces, scary faces are not always 
what they seem. 

Come with me to the Pumpkin Patch. 
An acre dotted with corn stalks and 
scarecrows and pumpkins, more 
pumpkins than you were expecting. 
Enormous pumpkins, flat ones, 
round ones, tall skinny ones; some 
misshapen, some with strange lumps 
and bumps, some with scars and some 
so little they are passed over again 
and again. “Not that one, Daddy! It’s 
too small. I want a really big one! I 
want that one…or that one…not that 
one, that one’s ugly!” For a pumpkin, 
whose entire life has been dedicated 
to growing into a carve-worthy orange 
globe, this is hurtful, degrading, and 
can bring a pumpkin to thoughts of 
revenge. 

The packet of Atlantic Giant Pumpkin 
Seeds from Burpee arrived at the 
Pumpkin Patch in a somewhat damaged 
condition. There were heavy, 
dark tire tracks over the face of it and 
minute holes where it had been ground into the ground. It had been rained on, left out in the sun and, 
in short, was not a beautiful thing. The owner of the Pumpkin Patch, however, having paid $2.99 for it 
wasn’t about to toss it out. Upon further inspection of the actual seeds, he discovered some were cracked, 
tiny pieces missing. “What the heck,” he thought, “I might as well go ahead and plant them, they’ll probably 
grow…maybe.” 


And plant them, he did. But in a far corner of the Patch, not out in the rows where he put the rest of his 
seeds. It was late May and an unexpected rain thoroughly drenched the Pumpkin Patch. “This is great,” 
the farmer thought, “water these seeds in and give them a good start. These babies will be enormous by 
September.” The rains came, the owner fertilized and the pumpkin seeds sprouted and put out miles of 
bright green runners. Blossoms formed and turned into small orange balls. 

Everywhere except there in the corner of the Pumpkin Patch where the broken, cracked seeds had been 
planted. There the vines were thicker, stronger and stretched out in every direction, seething with dark 
green life. Quite frankly, that corner area made the owner just a little uneasy. There seemed something 
unpleasantly unusual about those vines. The word, “sinister” came to mind. Ridiculous! He thought. 
They’re pumpkins. That’s all, just plain old pumpkins. But were they? 

July came and went, and the pumpkins out in the middle of the field grew fat, bursting with orange life. 
August arrived and the pumpkins grew to such gigantic sizes that the owner visualized pictures of himself 
in the newspaper standing next to a pumpkin – his pumpkin - that weighed more than the heaviest 
pumpkin in North America “Tiger King” grown by Travis Gienger and weighing in at 2,350 pounds. 

September sauntered in and several of the pumpkins would need industrial strength forklifts to move 
them. The owner was delighted. Meanwhile, over in the damaged seed corner, the pumpkins were 
strangely dark, oddly shaped and not nearly as large as the beautiful orange ones. A really good pumpkin 
should look exactly like Cinderella’s fairy-tale carriage, perfectly round and bright orange. The damaged 
seed pumpkins were more Amber, Spice, Clay, Rust and Bronze than orange and tended to be anything 
but round. 

October at last! The owner put ads in the newspaper and banners at the entrance to the Pumpkin Patch. 
The Pumpkin Patch would open on Saturday, October 3rd! Come one! Come All! 
Friday night, October 2nd, the owner walked through his beautiful Patch one last time to be sure all was 
in readiness for the hordes of pumpkin seekers who would arrive in the morning. And then he went to 
bed and dreamt satisfying dreams of large bank deposits. 

Saturday dawned. The owner arose early, enjoyed a cup of Pumpkin Spice coffee with a pumpkin bagel 
and went out to survey his pumpkin kingdom. He was aghast! All his beautiful, enormous orange pumpkins 
were smashed, squashed, squished…their innards spilled out on the ground. Strangely, the damaged 
seed pumpkins had migrated to the center of the field, squatting triumphantly amidst the carnage, many 
of them marked with traces of pumpkin innards and seeds. These pumpkins were sated, stuffed with the 
flesh of all the highly favored orange pumpkins. They had grown huge, their dark green leaves and vines 
coiled about their carnivorous, cannibalistic nutmeg and cinnamon colored – dare I say it? Bodies? 

“Pumpkins may seem benign, with their smiling jack-o-lantern faces,
but what horror may lie inside their hollow shells.” 

Leah, the Butterfly Whisperer, has had two more successes. Two more exquisite Monarch butterflies, 
Lizzie and Loretta, have donned their sombreros and headed south to Mexico. Lazarus is munching his 
way through the leaves and there are a couple of Little Dudes hiding amongst the milkweed. Days of Our 
Butterflies continues… 

October is coming, Fall is sort of here, it’s not quite as hot and we need to start looking for scarecrows 
around town. 

My book page: Amazon.com: Deanne Davis 
Where you’ll find “Sunrises and Sunflowers Speak Hope”
And “A Tablespoon of Love, A Tablespoon of Laughter”
Both of these books are stuffed with hope and a good recipe or two.
All five of the Emma Gainsworth pumpkin adventures are available on Amazon.comThey’re guaranteed to make you laugh and want to see what happens to Emma next. 


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