10.07.2005
HOW TO GROW A GIANT PUMPKIN
October’s here, so that means pumpkins. Front page of the Plain Dealer: Jerry Rose from Geauga County has grown a 1,344 1/2 pound pumpkin, winning the annual Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers competition. It measures 15 feet around, and weighs the same as a cow. As usually happens in these competitions, Rose won a ludicrous amount of money, and the pumpkin’s being shipped off to a Chicago hotel to be carved into a giganzo jack-o’-lantern. (Giant fruit can gain you fortune and fame: my dad’s buddy grew a giant, and sold it to a Six Flags in Fiesta, Texas for a patriotic pumpkin carving competition. He ended up getting all these fan letters from a 4th grade class in Mexico, prodding him for tips. He’s written an article on growing pumpkins in your very own garden.)
My interest? Growing up in Circleville, Ohio, home to the Greatest Free Show on Earth: The Circleville Pumpkin Show. Something that has to be seen to be believed, this year the festival hits on the 19th-22nd. The lady and I have been debating attendence–though my first inclination is to avoid it like the plague, the editor of Ohio Magazine told me he might be interested in a “Letter From…” piece for next October’s issue (these mags plan way far ahead.) So who knows? We might be in for a dispatch…in the meantime, check out the Miss Pumpkin Show contestants from my senior year in high school. Yowsa.
MAC’S BACKS READING
Just got done talking to Suzanne at Mac’s Backs, and it turns out there’s a totally awesome reading coming Tuesday, November 7th, with Dan Chaon, Kelly Link, and Maureen McHugh. Dan Chaon teaches at Oberlin and lives right here in Cleveland Heights. I read his story “The Bees” in the McSweeney’s Thrilling Tales anthology, back in undergrad, and Brandon, Meghan and I saw him read a couple of months ago at the Joseph-Beth over on Cedar Road with the McSweeney’s crew. I’m currently reading his two latest books, AMONG THE MISSING and YOU REMIND ME OF ME; both are great. Toni from my writing group worked with Kelly Link and said she was super-awesome, so I picked up her book, MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS. (Her first book, STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN, is available for free download, here.) Link is also the editor of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, put out by Small Beer Press, which, along with Link’s book, published Maureen McHugh‘s new book, MOTHERS AND OTHER MONSTERS. McHugh has a blog, Hodgkin’s and Me, about her battles with lymphoma. The only thing I’ve read of hers is a story called “Wicked,” which I liked very much. Should be a great, great time.
DISPATCH FROM WEST PALM BEACH #2
Outside the OceanView Community United Methodist Church, the message board asks: WHO ARE THE MEEK?
The meek are either working construction or hanging out in the shadows of Palm Beach: the bus boys on break outside the cuban restaurant, the valet checking his cell phone, or the lost, local skater boys watching the tourist girls from the shade of a park restroom overhang. (Historical fact of interest: West Palm Beach was founded in 1894 as a community to house the servants of the hotels over on Palm Beach island.)
You wonder if you’ll ever get a chance to shack up in a town like this. Your best bet is to join the Romanians and get into a nine-month hotel management program, waiting tables at one of these Old Folks Homes. On your day off, you could traipse down Highway 1 and hit the duck pond, where the deformed ducks chase you around for bread. Visit Burt Reynolds park and the Burt Reynolds (and Friends) Museum. Put a fiver through the barbed wire fence around the Turtle Museum and try to bribe the curator to open up for a few minutes on Monday.
Pass PGA National and remember to call your dad and ask him how he did in the annual amputee golf tournament. He’ll say, “Did pretty good with four guys who only had six legs between them.” Don’t forget Christmas is coming, and stop at the Pro Shop.
For a real peek of Florida, check out the Grassy Waters Nature Preserve. After walking around in this beautiful swamp, the lizzards and grasshoppers scuttling at your feet, (disappointment: no alligators) with the dull roar of the highway in the background, it hits you: Florida began inhospitable to humans, and fifteen bazillion tons of concrete later, remains so.
On the way home at the draw bridge, the landscapers, delivery trucks and the rest of the 9-5 Joes wait and wait, while Jocko the Republican sails his yacht out to port. And Jocko thinks, “Well, the world stops on my very whim, therefore, I own the world, so why not steal an election and loot the country and send the sons of the schmucks up on the bridge to war?”
The meek shall inherit thy costs.