Almost 30 years ago, in the weeks before Halloween of 1995, my next door neighbor got the biggest pumpkin I’ve ever seen in person. It was simply enormous – weighing in at over 700 pounds. It sat regally, a deep orange threshold guardian on his front stoop. His front door was rendered inaccessible, but that was a sacrifice he was willing to make in order to display such a god-like gourd. The whole neighborhood was in awe, and folks all went out of their way to stop and look at the behemoth.
The Plan
He went out of town one weekend. At the time I was 15 with a 13 year-old brother. Naturally, we decided to smash the pumpkin. I don’t know if this is still a common practice, but this was the 90s and we were young teenage boys staring at the greatest pumpkin-smashing opportunity we would ever encounter. We didn’t live in a rural environment; we knew we’d never get this close to a pumpkin of such magnitude ever again. I’m not one to question destiny – we waited until midnight and then silently made our way next door.
The Resilience of Youth
Of course we couldn’t lift the pumpkin. We dug in and tried with every last bit of our adolescent angst and mischief. But it was all to no avail. We simply lacked the strength to get the monster high enough for a good smashing. While many people would give up, my brother and I were now enraged—both at the pumpkin and at our own failure—so we ran back home for hatchets, crowbars, and baseball bats. In a matter of minutes 700 pounds worth of pumpkin lay gruesomely strewn over the stoop, walk, and yard. We returned home full of that laughter you get only from teenage idiocy.
The Aftermath
It was the angriest I’d ever seen my entire neighborhood. My neighbor posted a $100 reward for the arrest of whoever shattered his pumpkin-filled autumnal dreams. One day my brother and I were laughing about it with a couple friends, and unbeknownst to us one friend’s little sister overheard the conversation. I think she was about 10, and the prospect of $100 for a 10 year old in 1995 was just too much to pass up, so she ratted us out.
Epilogue
We were never arrested, but we were given an angry, threatening talking-to. Our friend’s little sister never got the $100. As the years passed we eventually made up with our neighbor, and no hard feelings remained. And if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change a thing. Treats are easy – I can get candy anywhere for nothing more than pocket change. But when you come face to face with the chance to throw down an absolutely crushing Halloween trick, well, moments like that don’t come along very often. I have absolutely no memory of what my candy haul was in 1995, but for 29 years now, as soon as the leaves start changing and the evening air gets crisp, I look back fondly on the cinematic demise of the greatest pumpkin I’ve ever seen.
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