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.

---

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.