Every year about this time, I connect with a very dear friend of mine, a cucurbitaceous fellow of unknown origins, Mr. Pumpkin. You may remember from past episodes that my relationship with Mr. Pumpkin has been quite crabby, due to my comments regarding the overly consistent texture of pumpkins. In the past, we argued, remarks were exchanged, and soon I had inspired the wrath of the entire Pumpkin Nation, which would include some 350 varieties, as well as a host of melons, cucumbers and gourds.
After my criticism, a pungent guilt seeped into my soul. Following several religious retreats—and an encounter with a shaman who waved a hawk feather over me – I found an open soybean field where I could repent and let my remorse bake in the sun. Soon, a rusty-orange perspiration seeped from my skin, signaling that I was on the road to recovery. In those pithy, soul-searching moments, I realized that my rocky relationship with Mr. Pumpkin had been a blessing. Yes, we were very different, but judging him by his gooey pulp was getting me nowhere. I rose from my humble position determined to see our differences as a strength – one that gave us a broader perspective on the world.
So, maybe more for his forgiveness than anything else, I carved out some time recently and caught up to Mr. Pumpkin. As I mentioned, our differences are many. He comes from a huge family, a family that includes various zucchini cousins, melons immigrants, and hardy gourds from Newfoundland. Unlike the pumpkins, however, our family is small and for the most part, our members do not fear being carved at Halloween or eaten around Thanksgiving.
Thus, yesterday, my zoom call to Mr. Pumpkin found him in the midst of his family reunion with members coming in from all parts of the pumpkin nation. In the background, I could hear the banter of adults playing their traditional game of Pumpkin-Opoly, and of course, kids sat glued to the big screen, enthralled with the classic “It’s a The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.” Other than the fact that Charlie had just received another rock trick or treating, everything seemed to be “pumpkin perfect,” that is, until I mentioned their estranged cousin Zuchini, who stopped showing up for the reunion years ago.
“Have you heard from Zuke lately?” I asked.
“No, Zuke’s gone silent. We’re worried sick about him. Do you think we need an intervention, maybe a peace building strategy?
“I don’t know Mr. Pumpkin. I don’t know your family dynamics. How did all this begin anyway?”
I could hear Mr. Pumpkin shifting uneasily. Somewhere in the history of their family, I had hit a deep chord.
“I think it all began years ago when Zukey began taking up too much space on the front doorstep. I mean, he was a big, big kid, no doubt, and stubborn to the core. There was always something a bit twisted about him. Then the Luminas and Sugar Pie pumpkins began making fun of how porky he was, and well, it just goes back a long way.”
Mr. Pumpkin went on, “By the time he finished his last year at Cut-the-Cordia High School, he had gained some 200 pounds.”
I listened to more of the story, the part where Zuke tried to enlist in the Zucchini Core, an elite group of Pumpkarines, but he lacked the core strength to do a plank and kept rolling away. After that, he apparently fell in with the wrong crowd, couldn’t get grounded in any pumpkin patch, and began hanging with a nasty bunch of squash. In 2004, he was arrested for possession of vitamin supplements and growth hormones the watermelons passed off to him, and then for years, no one heard from him. There were rumors he had joined a moldy underground group called DECAY, Dwelling Empire Corrupting Autumn Yards, an ominous group grown from a Burpee seed package, a clue to Zuke’s downward spiral.
“Yea, it’s not good,” Mr. Pumpkin’s murmured, his orange pigment shifting pale on my laptop.
“How big do you think he gotten by now? I asked hoping I wasn’t too personal.
A long hesitation followed. In the background I heard someone in Pumpkin-Opoly pass Go and collect their 300 orange dollars.
“Well, the dark web has him at 2,700 pounds, but no one really knows. He has a nickname now…Zuke-Zilla.
“Oh my, oh my,” I replied, but inside I felt a deepening empathy for the pumpkin family, and what Mr. Pumpkin must be going through. On the surface they are a tough-skinned bunch, but I knew they absorb a lot of extra water when under this kind of stress.
“Well, I don’t have the answers, but I will be praying for Zuke, and of course your entire stack. It’s got to be hard, especially on the little Baby-Boos and Jack-Be-Littles.”
As we said our goodbyes and good wishes for a happy reunion, my words seemed hollow, a vacuous attempt to ease Mr. Pumpkin’s pain. I sat for a long moment at my kitchen table, trying to imagine Zuke, now the size of a small yard barn – beyond pumpkin recognition. Surely, I thought, there must be a national helpline, perhaps a governmental program, some funding through the Pumpkin National Party, that could help.
Suddenly, my phone lit up. It was Mr. Pumpkin again.
“Forget something?” I joked.
Mr. Pumpkin’s voice was frantic… “Turn on your TV! Zuke has made the national news!”
I flipped to the Butternut Channel and sure enough, there was Zuke, some 3000 pounds of him, tied to the top of a mammoth medieval catapult. A distorted pumpkin, one of those odd-ball Kabochas, was on every network, demanding ransom payment from the entire Pumpkin Nation or else. “Let’s Lay This Pumpkin to Roast” was printed in bold letters on his sweatshirt, a gruesome message to the world. A look of horror was on Zuke’s face, and he was whimpering, and begging for his life to be spared. The ugly kidnapper, with only one eye carved out, looked strung-out from tripping on growth hormones, and was poised to pull the lever that would send Zuke hurling off the catapult and smashing into a million fleshy pieces.
Even as I watched, dozens of reporters appeared outside Mr. Pumpkin’s house, vying for the best camera angle. Soon, Mr. Pumpkin, stepped outside with the whole family, and made this public statement.
“We are pleading with the Pumpkin Nation,” he said with obvious emotion, “the gourds, the melons, the cucumbers and yes, all you watermelons too. We are all family, cucurbitaceous to the core. Our Zuke is one of us – he is not a bad zucchini, he’s just lost. Let’s bring him back alive! Please… if you have any compassion, help us! Help Zuke!”
Yet, as the hours ticked by only a few dollars trickled in. Some were saying that Zuke brought it on himself, that he deserved what was coming. It seemed the entire nation was just too busy gorging themselves at the dinner table to care about one overweight zucchini. When the final moments came without sufficient funding, the monstrous face of the kidnapper reappeared. Approaching the catapult, he waved his defiant stem at the cameras and with one heartless and cold-blooded jerk, released the lever. The nation gulped and held its breath watching Zuke lurch back, then like out of a pulp fiction movie, fly off the catapult and into the darkening sky. Remarkably though, due to his streamline zucchini shape, Zuke didn’t bobble through the air but shot straight out like a Tomahawk missile and quickly becoming a tiny greenish glow on the horizon.
Silence covered the shameful Pumpkin Nation that day, and in the household of Mr. Pumpkin. The TV was turned off and Pumpkin-Opoly put away. One of the smaller pumpkins complained, saying he had just acquired Gourd Walk, but was told that now just wasn’t the time. Zuke was gone, and Thanksgiving it seemed would always be marred with the tragic memory of one their very own, a lost zucchini who took a few wrong turns and made a few very, very hollow choices. Everyone tried to gather for the yearly family photo on the steps of the front porch, but nobody was feeling it, and so, one by one, they rolled away and went home.
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A blistering hot summer of little rain had all but dried up the garden of the local monastery, leaving nothing but parched earth and not a single vegetable. Back before anyone had kept records, the Blessed Salad Ladies of the Monastery of Perpetual Peas had always cultivated beans and corn, butter lettuce, and beets for the homeless of Orange County, California. This holiday season however, with temperatures hovering every day well over one hundred, the Brussel sprouts and squash had all but dried up, and the prospects of delivering meals to low income and destitute families were not looking good. The nuns of the Perpetual Peas had doubled their prayers and conducted all night vigils. Mother Lotta de Sorrows had called on the patron saint of all vegetables, Saint Leeks, pleading for a miracle.
Some say it was mere chance, but some say what happened that full moon night could have only been an act of God. Mother Senor of the Sorrows looked up from her kneeling position in the garden where the gourds used to grow and saw something fly across the sky. Astonished, she stood and called out something very religious in Spanish, or perhaps it was an archaic form of Portuguese, no one really knows. Around the monastery, the ground began to shake so hard that many of the sleeping nuns fell out of their cots, others say that was pure nun-sense. Gathering outside, what they beheld could have only been an act of God, for the entire monastery was covered by the rind and pulp of a massive zucchini, which had fallen in the courtyard and exploded. On every statue of every saint, across the basilica and strewn throughout every corridor and passage were thousands and thousands of zucchini seeds.
Ecstatic, the nuns got to work rolling out dough and baking zucchini bread through the night, and by morning piping hot loaves were being delivered to every hungry family for miles around. From the windfall of seeds splattered across the monastery, a thriving zucchini enterprise was begun producing world -renowned zucchini brownies, zucchini chips, noodles, fries and fritters. Of course, Zukey was never found. The Pumpkin family prays that in his infinite wisdom the Good Lord showed mercy to Zuke and took him straight up to that Big Pumpkin Patch in the Sky.
However, inside one isolated monastery in California, Mother Superior Lotta of the Perpetual Peas turns towards the heavens this time of year in thanksgiving for one overweight zucchini who went ballistic. To the devoted nuns, the night is celebrated as the Holy Night of the Zucchini, but to the locals lunching on zucchini boats and muffins smothered in Saguaro jelly, it will always be known as the Night of the Flying Zuke.
(For those of you who love gossip and would like to hear other Mr. Pumpkin episodes from the past, I would refer you to several podcasts on Knee Deep, Hello Darkness, My Pumpkin Friend (November 14, 2022) and also Either Way you Slice It (November 14 and 22), a two-part story revealing Mr. Pumpkin’s secret hideaway. Warning: episodes may include pulp, seeds and scenes that catch you off gourd.