The day after Halloween I drove to the pumpkin patch to retrieve my wheelbarrow and shovel. What a strange feeling when I get there. The patch is empty—no children running around, no moms or dads, only a few Charlie Brown pumpkins scattered around. The feeling is kind of like…taking down the Christmas tree.
I haven’t had that feeling in the prior 9 years of the pumpkin patch. And it’s all Kathryn’s fault, as in Rev. Kathryn. It started a few weeks back when we’re kayaking on Hobcaw Creek. Kathryn and Jim in their fast tandem get ahead of sister Carol and me in our single seaters. They stop and wait for us a few times and each time we talk a little and take off again. One time we’re talking about the pumpkin patch coming up soon, and Kathryn says to me something like you should write about the patch. Best I remember I was my usual noncommittal self.
Started writing the first notes and now have to finish what I started. Trying to write narrative makes me relive the events in my head, so the whole patch experience is more alive this year than before, and that’s a good thing.
Some things I’ve learned in working the patch. 99.999% of the people who come to the patch are very nice. That includes the ones who came here by way of I-95 South and I-26 East. Mike retired and spent many, many hours in the patch this year. Terri, who I thought was the quintessential southern lady, is really a Boilermaker from Indiana. Carol really is a native Charlestonian. That our new member, Roger, moved here from Blue Carolina. That Sam wrestles for Wando and Sean graduated from Bear Bryant U. Now they are all more than faces on Sunday mornings.
There were a few people and a dog from past years who didn’t work the patch this year and I sorely missed them.
The really good news is that LeRoy said we sold $26,611.25 worth of pumpkins this year. That’s over $500 more than last year. Including donations of $1,135 we’ll have $10,448.94 that the United Methodist Men, with a whole lot of help from a whole lot of people, will donate to the many missions that Hibben supports. And, of course, we’ll never know all the good that will be done with that money, but that’s ok because we took action on the admonition that faith without works is dead. Strange as it may seem, the pumpkin patch bolsters my faith.
LeRoy says next year he’s going to double my pay. Let me see—2 X 0 = 0. Can’t ever say that LeRoy doesn’t have a sense of humor.
So what else did Charlie learn at the pumpkin patch this year? That October is the biggest smile month of the year for him, and that he got far more out of the pumpkin patch than he put in.
I hope someone writes a blog about Pam and Operation Christmas Child.
