Hoarded Ordinaries

If you’ve ever thrown a big raucous party, you know that cleaning up the aftermath is more challenging (and less fun) than party prep. Here in Keene, the build-up to Saturday’s Pumpkin Festival was pretty impressive…but the all-but-instantaneous cleanup afterward is even more incredible.

It’s a point of pride here in Keene that the remnants of each year’s Pumpkin Festival will be cleaned up completely by noon the day after: noon. Imagine a festival in which Downtown traffic is re-routed so some 70,000 people can stroll down streets fringed with pumpkin-laden scaffolds; imagine a festival that erects four separate stories-tall towers supporting even more pumpkins. Imagine a festival where people are still arriving and bringing more pumpkins right up until the big gourd-count (and fireworks) at 8:30 pm. Each year’s Pumpkin Festival goes until 10:00 on Saturday night, and each year’s Pumpkin Festival cleanup is completed by noon the morning after. When’s the last time you or anyone you know threw a massive, World-Record making party and then had everything cleaned up by noon the next day?

Today’s pictures come from yesterday’s dog-walk around Downtown Keene. Before you tsk and shake your head at the trash, pumpkin detritus, and piled-up scaffold remnants, step back and consider this interesting fact: I took these photos at 8:00 am on Sunday morning. When, again, is the last time you or anyone you know threw a massive, World-Record making party and then was awake and sober enough to clean at 8:00 the next morning?

The Pumpkin Festival, like Keene’s annual Christmas tree lighting and New Year’s Eve celebrations, is organized by the non-profit Center Stage organization, and they’ve perfected the art of pumpkin cleanup. In the Festival’s early days, Saturday night’s jack-o’-lanterns became Sunday morning’s pig-slop as smashed-up pumpkins were carted off to local farms. In recent years, though, the Festival has outgrown the bellies of local pigs. In 1997 when the Festival gathered a then-Record-breaking 13,432 pumpkins, some 59.08 tons of gourds were added the Keene landfill’s compost pile the day after. When’s the last time you or someone you know threw a party that produced 59.08 tons of party detritus?

Of course, that was 1997; this is now. This year, Boston’s feeble attempt to break Keene’s standing World Record of 28,952 lit gourds garnered an impressive but eminently non-Record-breaking 16,402 lit pumpkins…and I can only imagine how long it’s taking a World Series-distracted city to clean up the tons of trash from that. This year, Keene tallied a “mere” 27,584 pumpkins: about 1,600 fewer gourds than last year’s picture-perfect festival. If 13,000 pumpkins translate into 59.08 tons of trash, imagine how many tons were carted from Downtown Keene yesterday morning!

One key to Keene’s seemingly miraculous cleanup is widespread community involvement. Whereas Boston’s Pumpkin Festival was just another party in an event-addled City, life in Keene stands still for the Pumpkin Festival. Yesterday as I walked the dog through the early-morning cleanup, we passed one Festival organizer who was uttering military-style commands into a walkie-talkie: “Which company owns the big fork-lift? You need to find out and get it here now.” Many of the fork-lift operators, construction crews, and dumptruck drivers toiling from the crack of dawn yesterday were working on donated time. As an act of community outreach (and free advertising), many local companies and contractors offer their services in return for the good will (and free advertising) that comes from their listing as a “Festival contributor.”

The pros aren’t the only ones who chip in to help with morning-after cleanup. Last year I woke and walked the dog early enough (or was that late enough?) to see local students helping out. I don’t know the genius who came up with the idea to encourage middle- and high-school guys to smash day-after pumpkins while giggling throngs of middle- and high-school girls push brooms, but apparently it works. If you give teenagers enough hot cocoa and donuts–and if you wave the flag of “Community Service” or even “Extra Credit”–you’d be surprised how much fun they can have doing “work.”

Yesterday morning, the throngs of students I saw where standing around looking useless: at 8:00 am, most of the pumpkins had already been smashed and tossed into waiting dumpsters. Already at 8:00 am, Downtown traffic was back to normal. Cars were parked at the usual meters, and both locals and folks from outlying towns were zipping down Main Street on their way to one or both sources of Sunday morning edification: church or Starbucks. On Saturday, Keene was all things pumpkin; on Sunday, it’s back to normal (and back to work) in the aftermath.

As I write these words, I’m listening to a Boston TV-newscast. Among perky predictions for a World Series sweep are more somber mentions of the tragic aftermath of the Red Sox’ incredible journey: details of the funeral arrangements for 21-year-old Victoria Snelgrove, killed by a poorly aimed police pepper-pellet at a post-game riot, and nasty photos of Paul Gately’s pellet-pummeled torso. Although I’ve never been in a Boston sports riot, I was nearly squashed in the angry aftermath of Green Day’s free 1994 Hatch Shell concert: I’ve seen how quickly a fun-loving crowd can turn nasty. We live in a seemingly civilized nation, yet images of Gately’s bruised chest remind me of the gruesome photos my undergraduate anthropology professor brought back from Belfast as proof of what rubber bullets really do to human flesh.

Compared with such realities, life in quiet little Keene seems quaintly idyllic: imagine 70,000 people wandering the streets in a festival that (according to Sunday’s Sentinel) involved nearly no crime. Keene isn’t Paradise, but it seems far removed from Boston much less Belfast. Whether our small-town setting brings out the best in people or whether the Angry Element stays in their cars and shuns our purely pedestrian party, the Pumpkin Festival is a rare breed: a truly family event where you can stroll the streets, eat Festival food, listen to music, and enjoy the constant visual stimulus of cute kids in costumes, laughing grown-ups, and all those pumpkins.

Although this year’s Festival didn’t break any World Records, last year’s record is unbroken, and (as Red Sox fans have been long practiced at saying) there’s always next year. Record-breaking or not, this year’s party was pretty amazing, and the seamless cleanup after a smoothly-organized event is even more impressive. A good time was had by all, and less than 12 hours afterward, everything was on its way back to “squeaky clean.” In other words, the Pumpkin Fest is that rarest of breeds: Good Clean Fun.

Be sure to read Leslee’s account of our day at the Pumpkin Festival. Even at our first face-to-face meeting, Leslee perceived my true nature as a Loud Bitch. That Leslee survived our day of Hunk Hunting proves that she’s pretty Smashing herself.

Wanting to lure several of my far-flung Single and Fabulous friends to New Hamsphire for some quality female bonding, I suggested that yesterday’s annual Pumpkin Festival would be a great chance to ogle Hunky Guys. After all, the Pumpkin Festival is southern New Hampshire’s premiere event, attracting some 70,000 people to stroll the streets of humble little Keene. If approximately half of those 70,000 bodies are male, odds would suggest that at least some of them are Hunky. But on a day when Keene failed to break her own World Record for the largest number of lit pumpkins, our attempts at finding Hunky Guys similarly fell short. After looking high and low for eye-pleasing males to ogle, Kathleen, Leslee, and later “A” and I were left cold.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not actually in the market for a Guy, Hunky or otherwise. Nope, after thirteen years of Solidly Coupled life, I’m loving my stint of Single Fabulousness. I love having my huge-for-one apartment to myself. I love coming and going when I please without need for explanation or permission. I love the plain old simplicity of shopping, paying bills, and making plans for one. When I get the Sympathy Stare from folks recently learning that I’m going through a divorce after a long and seemingly wonderful marriage, I want to shake my head. No, really, it’s okay. I’m happy now. Yes, a divorce like any breakup is painful…but I love my life now. Really.

In a word, I’m not (for now) looking for a man…but that doesn’t mean I don’t like looking at them. So with this being my last weekend as a married woman (my last chance at adultery, I’ve joked, since after Tuesday I’ll be fixing “only” to fornicate), I thought it would be good to immerse myself in social activity of the Supportive Female kind. Although I’m neither ready nor willing (for now) to re-enter the Man Hunt for real, I’m always a fan of people watching. And what better way to people watch than at a huge annual festival and in the company of friends who have a similarly practiced eye when it comes to crowd-ogling?

So yesterday with red-haired Kathleen, blonde Leslee, and later brunette “A” in tow as my real-life versions of Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte, I hit the streets as Keene’s own Carrie Bradshaw, doing some on-the-scene investigative reporting on the nature of southern New Hamsphire mating habits. As I now sit here just like Carrie typing on my laptop in bed, there’s one Sex-in-the-City-style question simmering in my head: in a state the size of New Hampshire, where are they hiding all the Hunky Guys?

We started by looking in all the usual places. Every woman loves a man in uniform, so the visiting Mounted Policemen from Dover, NH seemed a promising possibility. But with thick jackets and other protective gear covering potential Hunkiness, it’s tough to tell what lies beneath the kevlar. With yesterday’s brisk autumnal weather, there wasn’t much opportunity to see what anyone’s layers were covering: is that a Hunky Guy or merely a Hunky Outfit? At a recent talk, KSC author-in-residence Janisse Ray quoted a button she’d seen on the jacket of a matronly peace marcher: “I prefer to love men out of uniform.” Yes, I’d have to see more flesh before deciding whether the men of Dover’s Mounted Police unit are indeed New Hampshire’s Finest. Unfortunately, however, mounted men tend to be men on the move: the calvary rode off into the sunset before I could get the qualitative evidence I was looking for.

Luckily, when you stroll a street fair with two fellow bloggers, there are plenty of photo opportunities of the non-hunky kind. When or where else would I have the chance to photograph Leslee photographing Kathleen photographing yet more potties? Talk about meta-photoblogging! I can only imagine what the fellow walking in front of not one but three shutter-snapping women thought we were doing taking pictures of him headed toward the Port-o-Potties: maybe he’s strutting his stuff a bit more confidently now, convinced we’d found our sought-after Hunkiness in his bathroom-bound form.

After lunch, two margaritas, and some illicit Heavy Petting in the nonetheless disappointing Museum of Pumpkin Oddities, I was beginning to question whether New Hampshire much less Keene had any Hunky Guys. Had they caught wind that three fabulous females were on the prowl and subsequently gone into hiding? Was our plan to stroll the afternoon streets of Keene a poorly timed tactic since it seemed all the males we saw were either accompanied by children or themselves children? Surely there’d be more men milling about after dark when the glow of lit pumpkins marked bedtime for all those cute kiddies and the Married Guys who herded them down Main Street. But with both Kathleen and Leslee having other engagements to lure them away before dark, our hours were numbered. So many pumpkins–so many people–and so few Hunky Guys. Even Cinderella was lucky enough to make an impression on Prince Charming before her coach turned into a pumpkin. Surrounded by so many would-be-coaches, where were our own Princes, or at least our own Fairy Godmothers?

As four o’clock approached and we turned back toward my apartment where Kathleen and Leslee had parked their cars and where I later would meet “A” for another stroll through downtown, dinner, and yet more beverages at Keene’s local blues club, volunteers started to light carved pumpkins one-by-one: the famed Gourd Glow that tourists for miles around come to see. Surely New Hampshire’s Hunks would be lured by pumpkin light to crawl out of hiding, Keene’s own autumnal version of Groundhog’s Day? Yes, ‘twould be romantic to catch sight of a promising Hunk across a crowded festival, our eyes meeting over pumpkin-candlelight…but I still held out hope of catching sight of a Hunky Guy by light of day. Surely the sight of eye-pleasing Manliness wasn’t so rare a sight in New Hampshire that three keen-eyed women couldn’t spot themselves any? The streets were growing increasingly crowded as men with kids headed back to their cars and the men of Red Sox nation emerged to peer at pumpkins before settling themselves down in front of the largest TV screens they could find to watch Game 1 of the World Series over as many pitchers of beer as their bellies could hold.

As we turned back down Main Street for one last pass through Downtown before turning off toward my Hunk-free apartment, I became increasingly more persistent, peering through pumpkins for one last glance at those Mounted Policemen from Dover: surely some of them were single, or they had brothers, or they had Hunky friends who had other Hunky friends, a secret Band of Hunky Brothers that had been hitherto hidden to the likes of me and my Fabulous Friends?

And then, at long last, I saw him. My very own Mr. Big. He’s tall, dark, handsome, and as honest as the day is long. Respectable. Solid. Dependable. The kind of guy who can hold the Union together in a time of war while saying more in 235 words than any other orator has had the skill to say so succinctly since. Make no mistake, ladies: even from beyond the grave, Honest Abe is an Honest-to-Goodness Hunk.

And so last night after dinner with “A” and a subsequent call to Kathleen to beg out of a too-late (at least for this thirty-something-year-old) nightcap, I sat in my huge-for-one apartment and watched the Pumpkin Fest’s firework finale from my huge-for-one bed. Between you and me, girlfriends, I had to wonder what kind of fireworks Mary Todd Lincoln saw from her bed. And I, just like Carrie Bradshaw, had to wonder what kind of wooing, magic, or downright trickery it would take to get Honest Abe to make an Honest Woman out of me.

Before I get flooded with emails from Cyber-Studs claiming that they are the One and Only Hunk for me, let me remind everyone, again, that I’m not looking for a man, I’m just looking at them. Besides, guys, my expectations are unbelievably high. If you’re looking to impress Yours Truly, keep in mind you’re competing against Dead Presidents. Yep, to turn my head you’d have to be large enough–and, indeed, rock-hard enough–to be Mount Rushmore-worthy. As those Dover Mounties would say, “Keep moving, people. There’s nothing to see here.”
 

This great pile of pumpkins is actually a jumble of jack-o’-lanterns, the fruit of Keene State College students’ effort at yesterday’s Pumpkin Lobotomy. Corralled at the corner of Saint Bernard’s Convent yard, these gourds and thousands of others like them are awaiting their moment in the spotlight at today’s annual Pumpkin Festival.

Although the Pumpkin Fest didn’t officially start until this morning, the day before is a special occasion all its own. Volunteers started registering Keene-area pumpkins yesterday afternoon: never one to shirk my civic duty, yesterday I toted two soccerball-sized jack-o’-lanterns into Downtown’s Depot Square to add to the list. The pumpkins on display on Friday afternoon are largely the work of area school children and businesses, so lots of locals come out for a sneak peak at this year’s ample harvest.

If you’ve ever uttered the statement “If you’ve seen one pumpkin, you’ve seen them all,” obviously you’ve never been to Keene in October. Having grown up carving pumpkins, the children (and grown-ups) of Keene are ingenuous when it comes to creating colorful, wacky, and simply delightful gourd creations: alien pumpkins, clownish pumpkins, abstract pumpkins, you name it.

Among the highlights of each year’s Pumpkin Festival are the huge pumpkin towers, typically stocked with pumpkins carved by workers from local businesses. In an annual act of community outreach, Markem Corporation donates a giant carved pumpkin (the teeth of which spell its name) to top the Depot Square tower; on the rows below, companies such as Baybutt Construction advertise their services with neatly lettered jack-o’-lanterns. In Keene at least, there’s nothing like a pumpkin calling card to make your presence known!

The heart of Keene’s quaint Downtown is Central Square, a tree-lined roundabout which circles a grassy park, stone fountain, and bandstand-style gazebo. And every October like clockwork, the pumpkins invade Central Square…

With the pumpkins come locals to look at them…

And for one day a year at least, Keene, NH makes jack-o’-lanterns, not war.

It is, needless to say, a major endeavor to erect a huge tower of lit pumpkins at the head of Central Square. Hours before this scaffold was raised, cars were zipping ’round this rotary; by afternoon, traffic had been re-routed to allow workmen to set-up truckloads of jack-o’-lanterns.

And at 6 o’clock, a foretaste of today’s festival: Community Night and the lighting of Downtown’s partly-constructed towers.

With Friday’s Community Night as a kind of dress rehearsal, Keene readied herself for today’s outpouring of tourists, folks coming to town and to the Pumpkin Festival for the first time or returning for an annual visit. This year like any other, Keene is saying “Welcome” by putting her best face forward.

Today’s Photo Friday topic is Statement. And who better to make a statement than New Hampshire’s own Granny D?

At 94, Doris “Granny D” Haddock is running for U.S. Senate. You might have heard of Granny D several years ago when, at the tender age of 89, she walked across America (10 miles a day for 14 months, thank you) to deliver a petition (and countless stump speeches along the way) for campaign finance reform.

These days Granny D’s traded her walking shoes for a rainbow-painted campaign camper. After the presumed Democratic nominee for New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate seat dropped out of the race right before the candidate filing deadline, Granny D tossed her flowery hat into the ring. It’s not like she’d been sitting on the porch knitting sweaters in a rocking chair: in the time since her cross-country campaign finance reform trek, she’d traveled some 22,000 miles in an attempt to get working women to register to vote, damnit.

Whatever color your politics, it seems to me Granny D’s message rings true. If a feisty octogenarian can move her arthritic legs across America to make a Statement, the very least we can do is drive, stroll, or roll to our polling place on November 2nd. If this is indeed the Year of the Underdog, maybe Granny D can emulate the Red Sox by going to the Big City (in this case, Washington, DC) to Beat the Bums (in this case, the Senate yahoos who would probably be more productive–or at least less dangerous–if they themselves took up knitting and chair-rocking).

Even if you live to 94 and beyond, life is too damn short not to make a Statement.

It might not look like much now, but come Friday night when it’s bedecked with lit jack-o’-lanterns in preparation for Saturday’s Pumpkin Festival, this scaffold spanning the bike path at Depot Square will be spectacular. Tomorrow is when students at Keene State College participate in the annual Pumpkin Lobotomy, an all-day gourd-carving extravaganza in which truckloads of pumpkins get transformed into jack-o’-lanterns. And tomorrow night is when all the locals cart their carved ‘kins into town so when the tourists arrive on Saturday, the town is already brimming with beaming pumpkins. By Saturday night’s fireworks finale, Keene hopes to best its own World Record of 28,952 lit jack-o’-lanterns, a record set last year on a beautifully autumnal, quintessential New England day. In Keene, NH, pumpkins are our once-a-year claim to fame, second only (perhaps) to the Presidential Primary circus that rolls through town every four years. Here in Keene, NH, we’re known for doing pumpkins, and we’re known for doing them well.

Last year the town of Portland, Maine tried to topple Keene’s previous world record of 23,727 lit jack-o’-lanterns; at the end of the day, though, they logged a mere 15,001. This Saturday, the company that markets Life is Good T-shirts is also sponsoring a competing event on Boston Common that aims to break Keene’s World Record. But with Beantown distracted by Red Sox mania, I doubt that anyone in Boston is thinking much about pumpkins; in fact, a recent Boston Globe article mentioned the Keene festival without even a mention of the Life is Good festival. (Thanks to Leslee for the link to the Globe article.) No, pumpkins are what Keene does best, and Boston is too distracted with other fun and festivities to beat us at our own game. If Beantown can’t keep an established festival like First Night afloat, how do the Life is Good folks think they can muster enough community interest and involvement to bring a new show to town?

There’s nothing hokier than a small town festival…and that hokiness is precisely what makes small town festivals charming. Yesterday when I went grocery shopping and today when I went to Wal-Mart to buy a frying pan, nearly every shopping cart I saw had at least one pumpkin in it. Whereas the only thing keeping Boston together these days is baseball mania, here in Keene we’re managing to root for the Sox and buy and carve pumpkins. Somehow, it feels like one’s civic duty to make sure that Keene makes a good showing: even if we don’t break our own record, we better make a damned good attempt. Hokey or no, it warms my heart to see city maintenance crews putting up cornstalks on every Downtown lamp-post and taping “No parking all day Saturday” signs on every Downtown parking meter. Pumpkin Festival is the one day a year when Keene gets to shine, and shine she will rain or clear, damnit. Boston can have her Red Sox parties and Democratic National Conventions and all other stripes of media Whoopedy-Doo’s. For one day a year, humble little Keene gets to be the Big Kid on the New England block, and we aren’t likely to let go of that claim without a fight.

And as for Yours Truly, I’ve always gotten strangely, preternaturally excited about pumpkins: you could say I’ve been waiting my entire life to help Keene make pumpkin history. It takes so little to bring a gleeful gleam to a child’s eye, and on Saturday, I’m gonna carve ’til I find my own Inner Child and set her eyes alight with a double-dose of World Series wonder and jack-o’-lantern joy.