Little Punkin' Pie

Leta (my favorite daughter in law) invited us over to her house for a birthday gathering yesterday. Today is Dave's birthday and next week is Bethany's. It has been a tradtion in our family to serve pie on the fall birthdays rather than cake. This started with Jim who much preferred pie even when he was a little guy. So anyhow, late Satrurday afternoon I stopped at the farm market, bought a pie pumpkin, took it home, cooked it up, and made two pies. We arrived at Dave and Leta's house just before the other guests and noticed that the front steps were missing every other board. Now most people might take that as a warning sign and look for an alternative entry to the house, but we didn't know any better and no one told us any different. Hannah hopped up the steps. Nathan was behind her carrying the two pies when the step underneath him slipped. Luckily the pies ended up on the porch, unfortunately one of them was upside-down. I know that the Lord is working on me because I took the destruction of my hard work with relative ease. What could we do but take a ride to Wegman's and pick up another pie. We decided to look on the bright side; it wasn't Bethany on the steps and it wasn't my parents or Aunt Margie. Nathan isn't hurt and a pie is a small price to pay.

The picture... Every October, after begging for what seemed like weeks, Dad would take us out to the farms market for some pumpkins. We would look them over and carefully choose the "perfect" one. Then we hauled them off home to carve. Carving pumpkins with Mom and Dad is a wonderful childhood memory. We would gather around the newspaper covered dining room table and Dad would help us cut open the top of our pumpkins. Once they were opened up we would sink our hands into the cold, stringly inside and start to pull out the seeds. The seeds slipped out of our hands when we squeezed them and the pumpkin juice and strings made my arms itch. It was a messy job. We scraped and scooped until the insides were clean. Then we carved the faces. We tried to be creative like Dad, cutting unusual shapes for eyes, noses and mouths. Once we were finished Mom or Dad would make a "smoke holes" in the lids and put candles inside. We would light the candles, turn off the lights and admire our work. Night after night three pumpkin faces would smile out the front window at passersby. When Halloween was over they sat outside where their happy grins slowly drooped and their faces became contorted . We might wake up to find them smashed in the street or they might eventually end up as compost for the garden and we would look forward to the next fall when new pumpkin people would sit on the stereo cabinet and stare out our front window.