Pumpkin Festival 2025

 Now, before we begin, we have to set the scene and the mood. So imagine your life is going along quite normally, as it always does. You have pizza on Tuesday, maybe a kale shake on Friday. Then, the invasion begins. Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, everywhere you sniff, there is Pumpkin Spice! Including biscuits, sigh. Mrs B wanted to try these, so she bought them. They are basically cinnamon rolls that you drizzle pumpkin spice "frosting" on after they are cooked.

Now they did taste good, but still, Grands biscuits are supposed to be BISCUITS. So now we are in the proper frame of mind, let us continue the journey of a small town, celebrating harmlessly, or so they think!

First, and always most importantly, is the food. Without the food, the Pumpkin Festival is just a bunch of people walking around looking at stuff. But WITH food, well, that completely changes everything, now doesn't it? Food is like the Force.

“... my ally is the Food, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Hungry beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Food around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere...” 
~ Master Chef Yoda

Our first stop is always food alley. We get there around 4:30pm, before things kick off at 5pm. The food trucks are all open but not many people have arrived yet so there are no lines. I got a pepperoni calzone and Mrs B got some sort of breakfast sandwich with avocado. Then because I knew that a calzone wasn't very healthy, I decided to eat my vegetables and have a slice of pumpkin roll. Ahhh, that's the stuff.

Then it was time to visit the Venerable Town Hall. This majestic and gracious building towers over all its denizens, assuring them that the reins of government are in capable hands. Capable enough to run a Pumpkin Festival anyway. But that is all "I" will vouch for.

Next comes the annual perambulation around the Oval. There are many vendors and lots of people and you just never know WHAT you might see. Jack Skellington welcoming one and all. An anorexic cop! And to top things off, a pig on a leash. I kid you not. How can you not love small towns where you can see a pig on a leash in the town oval?
*clap
*clap
*clap

As you make your way around the Oval, not only are there "things" to see, but artwork on windows galore. Motorcycles seem to be a big theme this year. These were done on storefront windows, to give you some size comparison.

Finally, as the sun sets and the dark chill night sets in, when the lights go out and you wonder, "will I die in the next 5 seconds from a homicidal maniac slicing my head off with a razor blade?", THAT is when our Citizen of the Year appears, bringing light and hope to all who see them. They climb the firetruck to the top of the Venerable Town Hall and ceremonially light the giant pumpkin inside, and thus our small town is safe for another year from the hordes of massholes who try to invade us every chance they get.

This event has become a habit for Mrs B and I. We go, we eat, we look and buy, we laugh and we scream and holler to encourage the Citizen of the Year. Then we go home and go to bed, because we're older and tireder than the previous year :-D

The Great Pumpkin Saves the Town or Pumpkin Festival 2024!

The (Great) Pumpkin Festival officially starts at 5pm. So we drove down to the local County Store to park at 4:30pm. This was possible because I worked my backside off at work to get out at 3pm. Yeah, I’m just that good.

As is our custom, (and yes, we do have a custom when it comes to the Pumpkin Festival) we first went down to Food Alley. Not every place was open but most were and we took advantage of that to score ourselves some food and some open tables. Trust me, after 5:30pm it is standing room only, everywhere.

Mrs B stopped at the Fried Tempura vendor and got a fried vegetable platter. It was a lot!

It was also incredibly greasy. Just the way fried food should be!

Last year I had seen a vendor selling Elephant Ears, so this year I was curious enough to find out just what that was.

It turns out Elephant Ears are massive amounts of fried dough. HUGE!

Then we wandered around, looking at various vendors selling brightly colored crap.

Or vendors trying to sneakily separate you from your money for other kinds of brightly colored crap.

It was perfect! Even the obnoxious bands playing all over the place. I believe there were 3 this year. One in the center of the Oval, one off to one side and the third down at the beer garden a street over. There was also some “music” up by the Post Office. So no matter where you went, you were assailed by sight and sound. And jostled by people.

Unless you were me. Because I had a staff and people don’t mess with guys in cloaks who carry a staff as tall as they are.

Then the (Great) Pumpkin rose into the sky and the town was safe for another year!

Eat your heart out, Linus

Thus Sir Bookstooge navigated another deadly, people infested adventure and nobody died. That’s how you know it was good.

The End

[Art] Lady of the Fall or My Week XII

Tonight is the Pumpkin Festival. I wanted something to celebrate that event, as I don’t know if I’ll be able to get pictures and write up a post like I did last year (Pumpkin Fest ’23). So I asked Miss Ross to do something Festival’y and I think she delivered in spades. I’m pretty happy with this and I hope you can enjoy it too.

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The week, up to this point, has been something else. My coworker took the week off, just because apparently,  so I was working with the new guy. He’s been hired to work in both the field and the office, and he’s 6’6″. I’m 5’3″. It has made setting up our equipment a real chore and I’ll be glad when things return to normal next week.

Other than that and the falling temps and leaves, not much else to report.

Have a good day and if there is a Pumpkin Fest post, it won’t be until after 8pm tonight,  so don’t hold your breath 🙂

Pumpkin Fest '23

When in the Course of human events it become necessary for one people to celebrate a Pumpkin Festival, it behooves them to celebrate like there is no tomorrow. Amen!

The proper way to start a Pumpkin Festival is in the food alley. While most people go this later, we always go there first. It’s not crowded and there are no lines. One year I had to forego the whole food experience because the lines were so long. I didn’t make that mistake again.

I tried some chicken parm sliders, but they were so bad that I threw them out after eating just one. Thankfully, Old Reliable, ie, french fries, came through in a pinch. It is almost impossible to ruin french fries and the vendor selling these certainly didn’t. They were hot and salty. Perfect!

Once you are done eating, then it’s time to make the rounds. Lots of vendors show up, from artsy-fartsy crappola (Mrs B buys a flower head dress with flashing lights every year) to the local dojo-master who breaks boards to obnoxiously loud amateur bands. It’s all fantastic! And sometimes you see things like the above picture that make even the obnoxious bands worth hazarding.

Then it is time to park your backside on a bench and watch the people ebb and flow under the glowing orange moon. But wait, that’s no moon! (say it in your best Admiral Ackbar voice).

No, it’s a PFO!!!!! (Pumpkin Flying Object) Run for your lives before the little orange men probulate you. What’s that, it’s just a pumpkin balloon with the name of the biggest realty company in the town? Oh Willard, say it ain’t so!

Then comes the part we all look forward to every year. A firetruck pulls up to town hall and fully extends its ladder to the screams and ululations of the crowd.

Then the Citizen of the Year runs around the oval with a police escort, waving a pumpkin torch. They ascend the brightly lit ladder, stopping every couple of steps to egg the crowd on to longer and louder shows of town spirit, ie, screaming at the top of one’s lungs as long as possible.

Finally, the giant pumpkin is lit and all’s right with the world.

What a grand time. Even this year, when it rained buckets earlier and everything was wet and it was threatening rain all evening, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Another great success in the Social Life of Mr and Mrs Bookstooge.