Pumpkins, Corn Shocks, and Outhouses

Across the Fence 3518

As Halloween draws near, I can’t help but think of pumpkins, corn shocks, and outhouses. I know candy treats are high on the list of kids these days when they think of Halloween, but it was hardly on the radar when I was young. We didn’t go trick or treating. If you lived in the country there wasn’t much treating going on, but there were a lot of tricksters roaming the dark countryside.

I don’t remember carving pumpkins when I was young, but I carved a bunch of them when our kids were young. On Halloween we put them on the front porch and lit them when it got dark. Too often, there was a cold rain and wind when the kids went trick or treating. It just wasn’t the same when Erik and Amy had to wear winter coats or rain gear over their costumes. It seems like we had more than our share of those types of Halloweens. The Jack-o-lanterns didn’t stay lit very long in that type of weather.

One year I bought a book with fancy patterns you could cut into a pumpkin. I did several of them that year. They looked great. One was a wolf howling at the moon. I made the mistake of setting them on the porch the day before Halloween. The next morning the pumpkins were still there, but the designs were completely gone and only gaping holes in the pumpkins remained. I figured it must have been the neighborhood raccoons who had a nice feast of fresh pumpkin. Raccoons lived in the sewers when we lived in Madison. Every evening they emerged from the sewer drain in the curb along our front yard, and went in search of food. We also had a multitude of squirrels, so they may have joined in the pumpkin feast too.

I didn’t want to buy a bunch of new pumpkins so we put a light in the ones we had and they looked like mutilated pumpkins with large holes in their heads. They received a lot of questions and comments from parents accompanying their trick or treaters.

Pumpkin carving: Amy and Erik helping me.

Halloween was a bigger deal when our kids were young than it was when I was their age. It was nice to finally experience Halloween along with them. Now our grandson, Sean, will soon start trick or treating. He wants to be a robot at Day Care this year. Halloween’s an exciting time for kids. Now Tim and Amy are the pumpkin carvers. I hope they don’t have any visits from raccoons roaming through their neighborhood.

Corn shocks are another staple of Halloween for me. The fields around us were always filled with row after row of corn shocks. Now the only place I can find them is in Amish country. We like to drive around and watch as the corn is harvested. It’s as if time had stood still. It’s the same process that took place when I was young. Nothing says fall to me like a field of corn shocks and a flock of geese passing overhead on a cold October day. Add a full Harvest Moon in the background and it’s a perfect picture for Halloween.

I swear I didn't tip over this corn shock!

Now the only thing missing is the outhouse. People from my generation can’t think of Halloween without remembering the outhouse. It’s getting harder to find an outhouse these days. At one time every house had one nearby. Some people referred to them as “The Two-holer.” That name was used because most of them had two round holes cut into the wood board that functioned as the seat. A big hole for adults and a smaller one for the kids. You only needed one hole for adults because nobody liked sharing the outhouse while you were conducting your business. 

The exception to that was a twenty-holer I encountered at the airstrip in Qui Nhon after we came ashore in Vietnam. While waiting on the airstrip to fly to Pleiku in the Central Highlands, many of us had to take care of business and headed for the latrine. It was a simple wood building that looked like an extra-long outhouse with a door on each end. It had a long seat along one wall with twenty or more holes. We all sat down and started going about our business, when a Vietnamese woman entered and sat down on a hole next to me. She smiled at me. I was too dumbfounded to know what to do. We all looked at each other, wondering if we were in the wrong outhouse. The woman finished her business, got up, and left. We all broke out laughing. Welcome to a culture our government had failed to tell us about. 

That outhouse would have been mighty hard to tip over on Halloween. A lot of outhouses ended up in a horizontal position as ghosts and goblins roamed the countryside in search of tricks to play. Soaping windows was another trick, but I think it was easier putting an outhouse upright than cleaning soap-smeared windows.

As this Halloween approaches, may your pumpkins be raccoon free, may your treat bag be full of candy, and if you still have corn shocks or an outhouse, may they remain upright.

*