"Pumpkin Carving" by Richard F. Yates

It was a small room, a quiet room, in an average suburban neighborhood. This could be your neighbors' house---or even YOUR OWN!

When into this quiet, average, suburban home comes PAGANISM! A strange ritual dating back hundreds of years to a small set of islands in northern Europe---islands known for their mysterious cults and autumnal festivals of ritual vegetable mutilation and dalliances with SPIRITS and SUPERNATURAL BEINGS...

I'm talking, of course, of carving JACK-O-LANTERNS!

Originally, as we all know, Irish folks actually hollowed out TURNIPS to make their creepy little lamps, hoping the frightening faces carved into them would keep away EVIL SPIRITS---but when those old-timey end-of-summer festivals moved, with the Irish, to the "NEW WORLD" (which wasn't really NEW at all, considering folks had been living there for thousands of years...but I digress...), the new immigrants brought their carving ritual, but found a new fruit that proved EASIER to carve...

That fruit was...THE PUMPKIN! (You probably know all this, so let's just get to the damn photos...)

So...on Saturday afternoon, Mariah made a giant pot of potato soup, and we had Frankie and her fam over (basically, everyone who went on our "Pumpkin Patch" trip) to carve them pumpkins. (I'm freaky and neurotic, so I don't carve pumpkins---feels too slimy and gross on my fingers. I was there for moral support, documentation, and to occasionally hold the baby.)

My family are all creative, so they made some cool jack-o-s. We ate soup and rolls, watched some old-school Halloween cartoons, and did the whole FAMILY TIME thing... Definitely glad we took the time to get together! I highly recommend spending time with your family, friends, loved ones, friendly ghosts, and other happy supernatural creatures (basically anything that ISN'T frightened away by a jack-o-lantern!)

And that's all I'm going to say about THAT! Do fun stuff, spend time with your fam, take pictures, and share them with everyone, so that everybody remembers how great it is to get together and do fun stuff! (And repeat!)

Later!!!

---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)

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