Either Way You Slice It

I must admit I have been so confused about the identity of the pumpkin that over the years I have both extolled its great qualities one minute, then lambasted its merits the next. Listeners that have been privy to my stories about pumpkins, have been witness to the times when the leader of the Pumpkin Nation, Mr. Pumpkin, has railed on me for what he has called, “the ruthless and insensitive slurring of the pumpkin family, which is rooted in long-standing moral fiber and of course, high-quality topsoil.”

While I have not heard from Mr. Pumpkin in two years, I have a sneaking suspicion he is still angry at me due to my comments about his inadequate taste. This time of year, I am particularly sensitive. I believe Mr. Pumpkin has positioned his carved cousins everywhere I go, particularly on porches, where they can spy on me, and monitor my every move. Messages are then sent to him using a rarely used font called Gurmuhki Sandham Bold, a cryptic font that can only be decoded by pumpkin decoders at Pumpkin Headquarters.

Lest you listeners are taking all this lightly, let me remind you that this pumpkin family of Cucurbitaceous includes some 965 members that, if lined up next to each other, would circle planet Earth nine times, no small feat for a mushy carbohydrate that still hasn’t quite decided whether it is a fruit or a vegetable. Infrared satellite imaging has indicated an interconnection of family roots just below the earth’s surface, creating an intercontinental pumpkin communication system far exceeding anything scientists thought possible. From that system, a vast population of some 150 million pumpkins are produced and carved each year in our country, or one pumpkin for every two and half people. That half person, a tragic mathematical anomaly, would explain why so many pumpkins are never fully carved, and remain half-finished carved pumpkins with just one eye, or a half-carved mouth that has just a few teeth. I would mention some of the other deformities, but I run the risk of having my phone tapped or being followed in the produce section when I shop for melons.

The first time I became aware of the power of Pumpkin Nation was when my car broke down in Checker Saddle, Montana and I had to stay a night at Annie’s Brickyard Truck Stop, a motel and diner which according to a nearby billboard, had the best pumpkin pie east or west of the Continental Divide. For those of you who are geographically challenged, the Continental Divide is a boundary that divides North America’s river systems, with each side eventually emptying into separate seas. Reportedly, if a raindrop fell on the west side of the divide, for instance, it would end up in the Pacific Ocean. I don’t personally know how it would do that without stopping in Las Vegas to see Elvis, but that is the theory. Rain falling on the other side, however, flows east, stopping to flood an intersection near our home every time there is a downpour, and then eventually flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Interestingly, Annie’s Truckstop Diner was built squarely on the Continental Divide, which means that there naturally will be some interesting encounters with customers, and pumpkins there. While taking their seat on a stool at the bar, these patrons order a piece of Annie’s pumpkin pie, the most neutral tasting of all pies, and after taking their first bite, become anesthetized to any strong feelings about anything one way or the other. The service is not that great, really, and the view from the diner is not that scenic either, but the blandness of Annie’s pumpkin pie makes up for all that. Customers who come in wound tighter than a Swiss clock, step on the Continental Divide, have a piece of pie, and detach from their rough and tumble world.

Picture, for example, if you will, a piece of pie being served to an elderly couple who just stumbled into Annie’s. They are exhausted from traveling in their rented RV, and their partials hurt from sucking on too much hard candy. They dovetail into their booth, and begin eating their soft pumpkin slice, looking more and more relaxed as if they just entered a jacuzzi, floating in bubbles and ready to take on the next leg of their trip, a grueling nine-hour marathon to the flats of Iowa. It’s the pie of course that does that, but it is also the idea that while they were eating the world’s most mushy and agreeable desert, they were enjoying it while sitting on the continental divide, with no worries about falling off the mental deep end either way.

Apparently, people like that come in from across the nation all the time at Annie’s, knowing that the pumpkin pie has not been baked with any commitment towards either side of the line, or on behalf of one ocean or another. Folks that normally could not stand to even look at each other – are perfectly content to pull up a stool and order a piece of completely objective and uncomplicated pumpkin pie, pie that does not stand out in any way by taste or form or consistency and have conversations free of histrionics or drama. These people are in the middle of a carb high, a euphoric pumpkin haze that was documented by Cucumberly Ross in her landmark book, The Five Stages of Pumpkin Recovery.

So well-known is the diner’s reputation that Annie’s was recently offered up as a negotiating location after a recent statewide teacher strike. Both parties arrived, ate their pie and ironed out their differences in forty-five minutes.  The state agreed to put in more dry erase boards and give teachers Christmas Eve and Christmas day off. On their side of the Continental Divide, teachers agreed not to be so cranky when a child raised his hand for the fourteenth time, and both parties wiped the pumpkin pie off their lips with napkins that had a capital A printed on them, shook hands, and walked out laughing, telling jokes about how back in the day schools had only one fire drill per year.

Can you see now how a stop at the diner for a piece of pumpkin pie held this kind of magic? One day early last Spring, a biker couple sped into the diner’s gravel lot in a cloud of flying dust, came to an abrupt halt, and began making snarly comments to one another even before they walked through the diner door and let the unbiased nature of the Annie’s pie work its miracle. A sudden rainstorm came up, unusual for the area, and somehow, although the details aren’t clear, the angry bikers were washed down separate sides of the Continental Divide, eventually being carried to separate oceans to cool off. When they made their way back to Checker Saddle and to Annie’s again, calmer temperaments prevailed and they allowed themselves to eat the tasteless and uninspiring pie first before they spoke another word to each other.

Annie herself commemorated their decision by framing a picture of them sharing a piece, a picture that hold a proud spot back in the kitchen behind the oven. The Divide, coupled with the pumpkin pie, has that effect on people who use their words sparingly and eat first before spouting off opinions about how this or that ought to be or should be and could be, and give each other the what-for and why-not and Bob’s-your-uncle, and so forth and so on ad infinitum. Burst of anger just are not necessary when you sit at the capitol of stability – Annie’s Truckstop – with a plate of overly palatable pumpkin pie.

Be that as it may, I recently have had to confront my whole belief system on pumpkins, and although it has taken some time to come around, I have come to believe that pumpkin pie does have distinguishing merits beyond just its affable, monotonous nature. Recently a photograph came into my possession which shows me at the age of five, gorging myself on a canned version of pumpkin. It appears as if very little of the dish made it into my mouth, which I took as evidence that I had an eating disorder of some kind, yet I must admit that seeing myself at such a young age, vulnerable yet unmannerly, covered with orangey-brown crusty pie goop…well…frankly, I was flooded with emotions. Clearly, I had stuffed back a lot of pumplings, short for pumpkin feelings, over the years, that I am only now coming to grips with.

So, many years later, leaning back in my booth there in Checker Saddle, Montana with my triangular desert, I thought of Mr. Pumpkin, an old adversary, and hoped he was doing well. I had not heard from this leader of the Pumpkin Nation, as I said before, in almost two years and I had been very careful not to say anything negative about him. I had assumed he and his constituency – the gourds, melons, and zucchini – had moved on to bigger pastures, that he had forgiven me for references I had made on previous podcasts about pumpkin spice, pumpkin candles, pumpkin mathematical formulas, and one comment in particular, a slam about talk show hosts that wore puffy pumpkin sweatshirts.

Looking through the local newspaper, The Innocuous Herald, I read that both presidential candidates had bypassed Checker Saddle on their campaign trail, and therefore missed an opportunity to eat some pumpkin nothingness at the last stop you can make for miles in this part of Montana. They both could have sat for hours, and not only found nothing to argue about, but they would have left the diner with a new continence, an orange glow, as if they have been worshiping in a pumpkin field all day, praying for the future ripening of the next generation of pumpkins.

“Have time for a piece of pie?” Annie would have said to them, as they entered the diner.

“Time? Pie? Oh, well, gosh, yes, we do. I’ve heard it’s very, very good here,” they both would have answered as they sat down in a booth.

Then there’d be a misty warmth, not dominating, but a delicate, trickling waft that might smell of nutmeg. Its omnipotence would drift upwards, not to the left or right, but straight up, because at Annie’s Truckstop, this most blasé desert, inert pumpkin pie was being baked in the oven. Annie would then serve them each a piece, and their plates would slide silently across the table, uncommitted, neither east nor west, but directly on the continental divide.