You Might Be a Redneck


If your idea of a fun Saturday consists of sitting in your lawn chair all day while watching garden vegetables being launched through the air at speeds of up to ninety-miles-an-hour while Gomer Pyle narrates the entire scene from the back of a flatbed trailer on an ancient PA system powered exclusively by mice running on a wheel.

…And, up next, we got the volunteer fire department with the Punkinator; this here baby is a marvel of modern technology, employing the newest in air compression science….whoa! where did it go? I lost it in the sun! Anyone got a visual on that punkin? Earl? Earl, you see it? Ok, there it is! Folks, I’d say that punkin is halfway to Saturn! I hope them Martians like them some punkin pie! Ha,ha,ha!

And, while I might be joking about the mice, I am dead serious about the rest of the scenario.

Clearly, I am only part-redneck because I could tolerate barely an hour of watching the “Punkin Chuckin” before declaring myself bored silly at which point, Jana, Chris, the kids and I picked up and ventured to greener pastures AKA: The Pumpkin Patch where the children scampered through a free corn maze before picking out this year’s sacrifice to the Jack-o-Lantern gods.

I think they did a pretty good job although, the Man-Cub got a wee bit over-ambitious in judging his own strength and could barely get his gigantic pumpkin back to the car. On the other hand, had he wanted to be the Headless Horseman for Halloween, we would have been all set.

After paying for our pumpkins, we returned to our house for pulled pork sandwiches and spiced cider. The kids entertained each other and Jana, Chris and I visited with our good friend, Neecie, who stopped by to borrow a costume for an upcoming Halloween party. We tried to convince Neecie that she should accompany us to the ‘haunted” corn maze later that night but she was having no part of those hijinks so, we were on our own with seven kids.

When we got to the maze, the line for admission stretched along the country road for at least a quarter of a mile. Luckily, the weather was quite mild and the hour and a half that we spent in line went by quite quickly, relatively speaking.

The maze itself ended up being a lot of fun, if not at all frightening- for the adults that is; the kids were suitably terrified. In fact, I ended up dragging fifty pounds of Man-Cub who had cleverly managed to attach himself-leach style-onto my left leg. Have you any idea how difficult it is to navigate a corn field in the dark with a fifty-pound tumor growing from your appendage? It. Is. Hard.

We managed, though and made it through the maze in a little over half an hour. Of all the creepy things in the maze, the most popular was a scarecrow perched on a straw bale-we debated whether or not it was real for at least fifty yards as we approached and, when the first two or three of us made it past without any movement from it; determined that it was, in fact, fake. This is, naturally, when it leaped from the straw bale, waving its scythe over its head and screeching to beat the banshees.

Jana peed a little in her pants which cracked me up. Because I am a good friend like that.

Anyhoodle, the day was a huge success.

The whole weekend was successful, actually. I managed to make the butternut squash soup that I had wanted to try and it turned out quite well. Better than quite well- in fact-it was delicious.

The Man-Cub, who generally turns his nose up at potatoes, onion and carrots and who turns positively green at the thought of eating squash, loved the soup. I mean, loved it-ate his bowl and asked for seconds. I have no idea how that happened but, I am willing to take full advantage of it and, since the recipe made a ton of soup; we will have plenty in the freezer for days when the child is short on vegetable consumption and I am at my wit’s end with trying to convince him to just eat one brussel sprout forcryingoutloud! It’s good for you!

That soup might just save my sanity. Or, you know, what’s left of it.

Speaking of, I got a call from the Man-Cub’s PE teacher last night; she wondered if Hugh and I would be willing to run the school’s Halloween Carnival on Halloween night. It’s only four hours of dealing with every child in town plus their parents, the volunteers, the teaching staff and random High School students who decide to crash the party. I told her that I would have to discuss it with Hugh and get back to her.

There for just a split second, I actually considered saying yes.

Now, that’s scary.