The Night Of The Pumpkin

Most of the time predictions just don't work. The end of the world did not come in 2012, unless you count the presidential debates which only make you wish for the end of the world or the start of yet another PBS pledge drive which should mark the end of the world but no, the world is still here so that one just went out the window. And there are others much like it which when looked at in the bright light of day just don't work.

So for the most part predictions don't work.

Now that's not true of all of them. When I was a kid growing up in ole Gravel Pit, one of the most anticipated events of any week was the publication of Bill McClanahan's editorial cartoons.

Oh sure in other parts of the country Pottawatomie Phil is the gold standard, I hear the Irish are supposed to have a lock on luck and Linda Goodman can see the future in the stars.

But in Dallas, Texas in the fifties and sixties, there was nothing in the world more certain than “Weekly Predictions (Unguaranteed)".

Now Mr. McClanahan was not only the Dallas Morning News Editorial cartoonist he was also the sports cartoonist and the weekly magazine cartoonist and in his spare time he created all of the Southwest Conference's ideal images for their mascots.

Just take a look at Mr. McClanahan's images and ask yourself if you've ever seen college mascot look so right? He did such a good job that when he died, his arch-rival Bob Taylor, editorial cartoonist for the Dallas Times Herald drew this fantastic tribute.

So you see I've had a long-held belief in the wisdom and truth of comics going back to way long ago, round about the Flood or maybe even further back like before Kieth Richards was dead. (He is dead you know. No one could look that way and still be alive, He just hasn't gotten the memo yet.)

So in that far distant October when Charles Shultz sent Linus out into the pumpkin patch to wait for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin, I knew he was on to something

Now it may have taken others a few years to catch on but it did happen and when it did it happened in a big way. Halloween and its pumpkin mascot are now the second most heavily shopped holiday on the calendar. And Father Christmas did have a bigger sponsor after all. You just can't fight Coca-Cola.

Halloween is so big that it has become worth investing in. A smart girl with a great body and a good shtick made her play and now Cassandra Peterson owns Halloween. Her Elvira: Mistress of the Dark creations make up on third of all Halloween sales.

But even with Elvira leading the opposition and you can't deny that Elvira is one attention getting whirlwind, the lowly super squash remains the enduring image of Halloween.

Sure Thanksgiving has a claim on the pumpkin but that pumpkin is not the Great Pumpkin, it's a pie. Tasty and golden delicious to be sure and with a bit of whipped cream and some leftover turkey it makes for one of the year's greatest treats but it ain't the squash of our hopes and dreams. No that squash was promoted and developed by Sparky and when the days get short and the nights get dark we all have just a bit of Linus in us and the pumpkin patch calls and there we are sitting in the dark and the cold waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arise.

We do this in spite of the things that go bump in the night, we brave the ancient enemy and venture away from the light of the cave into the vast dark and invest our faith in that moment when the Great Pumpkin rises from the pumpkin patch and brings joy to all of the really good boys and girls.

Fine, so a squash has its on P.R. Department and probably an agent and maybe a multi-year deal with the NFL, so what? I am an artists and don't give a boo or a screech one way or the other.

Didn't you get the part about Halloween being the second most heavily marketed holiday of the year? Not Valentine's Day, nor St. Paddy's nor even, Thanksgiving in spite of it signaling that the campaign is over and there will be no more attack ads and no debates lousing up the TV schedule and no talking heads saying things that can't be verified about folks we only think about once in a blue moon, or every four years whichever happens first. I'm not really sure about the blue moon thing but it did have a nice literary ring.

Don't think for a moment that those crafty Yankee traders haven't been on to this for a while. They start back in late February or March lining up what they will be promoting when the time comes. They have the name thing going for them so you can be Currier and Ives will be showing cards with turning leaves and hay rides and pumpkins and they'll promote the joys of late fall, or let's do the boutique thing and call it autumn or better yet Indian Summer.

By the way, they know that hay rides are like malt shoppes and have gone they way of the dodo, but that doesn’t keep them form bring out the ole wagon when the leaves turn. No sir, they know that even though Sid and Nancy wouldn't be caught dead on a hay ride and that there is no American Singing Hay Ride show with Christina and Nicki fighting over one of Paris' old minis when neither one would be caught dead in a dress over twenty-four hours old, hay rides are just the right nostalgic thing to sell a ton of cards so they get their artists to do up a bunch of hay rides and what about those covered bridges? Do they really think that covered bridges only exist in New England?

Maybe they have a right to do just that cause there aren't any artists taking advantage of the seasons to paint that sort of thing out here where oddly enough we have turning leaves and bridges and wagons and yes, pumpkins.

Don't let the Currier and Ives thing scare you off. Artists, serious artists have enjoyed the squash for hundreds of years. The clever fruit comes in all sizes, shapes and colors and they mature at different rates so that we do get the big, fat orange ones everyone loves so much, but there are striped ones, and yellow ones and many in between.

Organize them like you would any still life. They sun is cooperating right now with long, slow sunsets providing hours of soft, warm orange glow for making those veggies sparkle. Oregon has enough sunlight, leaves and pumpkins to make those crafty Yankees shiver in their cold New England boots. But will the artists do anything about it?

A thousand years ago, growing up in the shadow of Big D where art was something that only strange, sissy, foreign, eastern high-hats cared anything about and Mr. Stanley, (Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus) kept trying to make sense of all that abstract art from places where men did dance and painting and other suspicious things it was natural for boys to grow up completely ignorant of anything resembling art.

The Dallas Museum of Fine Art waged a losing battle to turn away the forces of Chevy and Ford and NASCAR and long-necked Buds and there were artists lurking about, but you had to have an in to find them. So no one thought much about art or still life or pumpkins.

But that isn't true here, we live with artists all around us, art is behind every door, the South Slough hosts art, The Black Market Gourmet not only hosts art but creates art in Jardin's kitchen, the Coos Art Museum, a real honest to God art museum in a community of thirty thousand hosts art and there are artists everywhere you look, so get your brushes ready, get those palettes charged and get out into the pumpkin patch, the Great Pumpkin is coming and you don't want to wind up on his naught list now do you?