Smashing Cold Pumpkins
October 31, 2018 – Huntsville, Alabama, USA
The warm fall evening was perfect for trick-or-treating. Changing and fallen leaves cast an orange glow over Jasper Jorgenson’s neighborhood as the sun clung to the sky above the horizon. Some parts of Huntsville looked on trick-or-treaters as a nuisance. But Jasper lived in a part of town where trick-or-treating was embraced. Houses were spaced so that the ratio of candy per mile was high. And enough residents gave out full-sized candy bars to make the total payoff the best in the city.
Trick-or-treaters had been on Jasper’s mind since he installed a new doorbell camera. He loved monitoring delivery drivers and door-to-door solicitors. On Halloween night, he sat glued to his laptop, watching a live video of his porch. With an exterior light turned on, he had a clear view of the spiderweb decorations added by his wife and the flickering pumpkin he had placed near the porch’s steps.
“Here come the first customers,” Jasper called to his wife, Lorene. “Hurry, they’re about to knock.”
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” called Lorene. She grabbed a mixing bowl of candy from the kitchen counter and scurried to the front door.
“Remember to only give them one. Don’t let them grab a whole handful.”
“I know, Mr. Scrooge. Any other advice on how to hand out candy?”
Jasper watched as the front door opened. Lorene dropped a piece of candy into bags held out by small children wearing princess and cowboy costumes. Their parents hung back in the shadows.
“Cute kids in that first batch,” Jasper said to Lorene when she returned to the kitchen.
“Why don’t you come meet some of them yourself?” suggested Lorene.
“Nah. I’d rather watch from here. They don’t want a grumpy old man giving them their candy.”
Jasper kept his eye on the computer screen, alerting Lorene about new arrivals. He called out how many kids were on their way to the door and their approximate ages. As the night grew later, the average age climbed. Fewer and fewer parents tagged along.
After the last of the sunlight disappeared and real darkness blanketed the neighborhood, there was a noticeable shift in the attitude of the trick-or-treaters. Older teenagers showed up without costumes. They held up bags and sarcastically called, “Trick or treat!” Their tone sounded challenging, as if they dared Lorene to ask why they did not wear a costume or if they were too old for candy.
Jasper sensed potential mischief in the air. When he spotted two teenagers creeping up to his porch, one of them holding a baseball bat, he called excitedly to his wife. “Here we go! Watch this! Keep your eye on the pumpkin! This’ll be good!”
The pumpkin Jasper had positioned near the steps was no ordinary jack-o-lantern. It was the main reason Jasper was so excited about Halloween and his doorbell camera.
Jasper’s neighborhood was famous for trick-or-treating and for pumpkin smashing. No one could quite remember when the two traditions became intertwined, but the innocent trick-or-treating children gradually transitioned to pumpkin smashing teenagers. Halloween night provided a couple of unsupervised hours to take out adolescent aggressions on defenseless pumpkins. The next morning arrived with the remains of a massacre. Pumpkin seeds and pumpkin guts covered sidewalks and lawns.
Some residents did not seem to care. They accepted pumpkin smashing as a tradition. Others hid their pumpkins after the sun went down. Rather than subject them to ruthless teenagers, the pumpkins were carried into garages and backyards where they experienced a natural death – shrinking and rotting until Thanksgiving.
Jasper did not have any tender feelings for his own pumpkins, but he did not appreciate destruction on his property. He might not have cared so much if the pumpkin smashers cleaned up after themselves. But he was always the one picking pumpkin seeds off the cement walkway.
This year was going to be different. The installation of his doorbell camera led to a brainstorm about a pumpkin which could not be so easily smashed. How fun it would be to watch teenagers wail and stomp on something they could never destroy!
At first, Jasper planned for a solid steel or a concrete pumpkin. He loved the idea of kids stubbing their toes when they kicked it. When he thought about the weight and his bad back, he decided on something lighter – a big, fat rubber pumpkin.
Jasper considered himself an independent inventor and problem solver. Rather than searching for a rubber pumpkin he could buy, he searched for ways he could make one. He settled on a plan to use a hollow, decorative plastic pumpkin and pour in liquid silicone. Once the silicone hardened, he would pull off the hard plastic shell and be left with a wiggly, jiggly jack-o-lantern.
As easy as the plan sounded, Jasper spent hours in his garage getting the silicone color just right so that his pumpkin looked like something grown in a field instead of created in a lab. He also had to figure out how to keep the plastic mold from sticking to the silicone and how to leave holes for eyes, a mouth, and an LED candle. Lorene offered advice from her many years of making Jell-O molds, but Jasper told her he wanted to figure it all out himself.
The final version of the silicone pumpkin was about to meet its first combat test. Jasper pointed for Lorene to watch the computer screen as a bat wielding teenager approached the porch.
“He’s in for a surprise,” said Jasper with a chuckle.
The teenager looked around guiltily and then raised his bat for a fatal blow. He obviously hoped to spread pumpkin remnants over Jasper’s front door. When the teenager swung down with the bat and made contact with a THUNK, the pumpkin did not fly forward. It merely shook. The surprise recoil stung the teenager’s hands and he dropped the bat.
“Woo hoo! Did you see that?” cried Jasper in delight. “It worked! It worked perfectly.”
The second of the two teenagers on the porch took a swing at the pumpkin with the same result. Then both teenagers tried to kick and punch it. Jasper laughed hysterically.
“Why don’t you go blink the porch light and scare them off?” Jasper said to his wife. “We don’t want them hurting themselves.”
Over the next hour, Jasper and Lorene watched multiple attempts to destroy the silicone pumpkin. One attacker got as far as pushing it off the porch and onto the front lawn. After Lorene flashed the porch light, she and Jasper dusted the pumpkin off and restored it to its original position. The LED light inside still flickered, taunting any remaining challengers.
Fifteen-year-old Cobalt Graines was one of the teenagers on the prowl for pumpkins. He did not carry a bat and did not wear stomping boots. He quietly pulled a wagon he made himself. The wagon had front handles like a rickshaw and a body that was low to the ground. Inside the wagon were two large barrels belching white smoke. Pushing the wagon from behind was Cobalt’s twelve-year-old sister, Rubidia. She served as an assistant but was also along to call their parents if Cobalt got into too much trouble.
Cobalt was motivated to destroy pumpkins, but he wanted to do it more elegantly than the average kid his age. Perfect pumpkin annihilation should not be as crude as smashing or stomping. Truly blasting a pumpkin to smithereens required the liquid nitrogen held in the barrels behind him.
Cobalt had always been something of an inventor, encouraged by his parents. His father worked at the nearby university where Cobalt scrounged the liquid nitrogen containers and wagon parts. And while his dad did provide the actual liquid nitrogen, Cobalt rejected any help with the wagon construction or the experimentation in preparation for Halloween night.
“There’s one,” Cobalt called to his sister, after spotting an intact pumpkin next to a two-story brick house.
They stopped and Cobalt positioned his wagon so that it was directly in front of the walkway that led between the street and the house’s porch. Then, dressed in dark orange clothing, Cobalt slowly snuck up on the pumpkin. When it was within reach, he grabbed it with both hands and tiptoed back to the wagon.
With Rubidia’s help, Cobalt dropped the pumpkin into a wire basket and lowered the basket into a wide-mouth liquid nitrogen container. A bubbling noise and white vapor erupted from inside.
“Okay, give it five minutes,” Cobalt said to himself. He kept his eye on his watch as the bubbling continued and vapor spilled over the wagon and out into the street. “That’ll do it,” said Cobalt when the time was up.
Cobalt put on leather gloves and lifted the basket and pumpkin from the container. He transferred the frozen-solid pumpkin into the harness of a catapult contraption built on the front of the wagon. After a few cranks on the catapult’s winch, Cobalt made some final adjustments to the wagon’s position. Then he pulled a lever.
The frozen pumpkin rose into the night sky, hung there for a second, and then crashed down onto the concrete. A thousand frozen shards burst from the impact point.
“Bullseye,” said Cobalt with satisfaction.
“How many more are we going to do?” asked Rubidia.
“Until we run out of pumpkins or liquid nitrogen,” answered Cobalt. He dumped some of his liquid nitrogen reserves from the second container into the one with the wider mouth.
By the time Cobalt and Rubidia pulled up to Jasper’s house, the indestructible silicone pumpkin was still intact. Cobalt spotted its LED candle and aimed his wagon at Jasper’s porch. He tiptoed to his target and put both arms around the pumpkin. He immediately knew something was different. He backed away and then poked at the jelly-like pumpkin with first his finger and then his foot. He shrugged, wrapped both arms back around the pumpkin and picked it up.
Cobalt called for Rubidia to help him push and roll the unwieldy pumpkin close to the wagon. They struggled to get it into the dipping basket, and as Cobalt dropped it into the liquid nitrogen, he said, “This one’s going to need more time.”
Cobalt checked his watch and added the last of his liquid nitrogen reserves into the wide-mouth container. Vapor spilled around him as if it came from a hyperventilating fog machine.
“We’ve got to get it good and frozen,” muttered Cobalt.
He was finally satisfied and strained to pull the basket from the wide container. He handed Rubidia one of his gloves and they used them like potholders to shove the now solid pumpkin into the catapult.
“I hope this can take it,” said Cobalt as he carefully cranked his winch and then stood back to eye his launch angle. “Fire in the hole,” called Cobalt as he yanked on the catapult’s lever.
The magnificent silicone pumpkin sailed into the air. It did not reach the height of some of the earlier launches, but when it came crashing to the earth, it exploded into more pieces. Frozen bits of silicone disappeared across Jasper’s front yard.
Inside the house, Jasper had watched the whole thing on his computer screen. He sat mesmerized until his pumpkin disintegrated. In a shocked response, he hurried to his front door and flipped on the spotlight which illuminated his entire front yard. Jasper shuffled to the spot where the pumpkin had made contact with his walkway and leaned down for some of the tiny silicone remnants. He wondered how he was going to pick the silicone out from the grass in his lawn.
Jasper stood up and got his first in-the-flesh look at Cobalt. The teenager stood next to his wagon, his hand still close to his trigger lever. Jasper walked slowly toward him, still surveying the frozen damage.
“I worked on that pumpkin a long time,” said Jasper in a cool voice.
Cobalt could not tell if the man approaching him was out for revenge. “It was a really nice pumpkin,” he called. “I didn’t think you’d care if I smashed it. I thought that’s what people around here do.”
Jasper stopped at the end of his walkway and took a long look at the liquid nitrogen wagon. “I don’t think I’m mad. I guess I’m impressed. You’ve got a nice rig here.”
“Thank you. I made it myself,” replied Cobalt in a relieved voice.
“Do you do this to pumpkins every Halloween?”
“No, it’s my first time. Do you make your own special pumpkins every Halloween?”
“My first time too,” replied Jasper. “You know, most people don’t appreciate how much work goes into building something yourself. They think you can buy everything.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
Jasper kicked at a little silicone shard near his foot. He chuckled to himself. “You know, I mostly like to work on projects by myself, but I was thinking maybe if would be fun to try something with a partner. You ever thought about something like that?”
“I kind of like to work alone,” replied Cobalt.
“Yeah, yeah, so do I. But I bet if we put our minds together, we could come up with something epic. You could make one part of it and I could make another.”
Cobalt bit his lip and thought for a moment. “That might be possible. I did like your pumpkin. Maybe we could do something for next Halloween.”
“Sure, next Halloween. You know where I live. Stop by anytime and we can talk about it.”
“Okay, I will.”
“You gonna smash any more pumpkins?”
“I think I’m done. I’m out of liquid nitrogen.”
“And I guess I’m out of pumpkins. We’ll both call it a night then. Hey, did you get any candy?”
“No, we were kinda busy.”
Jasper returned inside and brought back all the unopened candy Lorene had not given away. He poured it into an empty spot in the wagon and called “Happy Halloween” as Cobalt and Rubidia pulled and pushed their way down the street.
Please remember to subscribe for weekly reminders about new stories. You can subscribe by clicking here: Subscribe. You can also follow new content on any Podcast platform or on YouTube.