Throwback Thursday - Pumpkins

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) - Halloween is just around the corner, and whether you carve them, paint them, or turn them into pie, pumpkins have long been a big part of the season. It’s the focus of this week’s Throwback Thursday with Brian Bouchard.

For a lot of people, picking out the right pumpkin is part of the fun of Halloween. Then comes the bigger question... what are you going to do with it? In this week’s Throwback Thursday, we dial the time machine back to 1985, when WAGM Reporter Laurie Quinlivan looked at everything from carving and painting pumpkins, to picking out the perfect one.

The signs are everywhere. Halloween is coming. And it’s time to start thinking about preparing your pumpkin. WAGM’s graphic artist shares a few carving tips.

“Usually I just draw the picture of some idea of what I want for a face down on a piece of paper. Then I take a magic marker and I lay it down on the pumpkin. And usually I use a thin, stiff knife, which allows me to go around corners really easy.”

Of course, if you can’t stomach the thought of gutting your pumpkin, take a few hints from these artists at work.

“It’s gonna be a boy. He has a tongue that’s white, and he has a whole bunch of red hair.”

“Well, I’m painting this stem and I painted it green, and now I’m painting it white, and it’s going to look good.”

“I like to make it like hair and stuff because it looks like a real pumpkin sometimes.”

“What do you want him to look like?”

“My brother.”

One of the wildest pumpkins in the class was John Fisher’s Indian pumpkin.

“That’s supposed to be its mouth in some place in there. That’s their war marks. Back here, that’s describing what type of Indian it is. Up here it’s a blonde one. And those are supposed to be its fleas.”

“Fleas?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think of this guy’s pumpkin over here?”

“I think it’s weird.”

“How come?”

“It’s not realistic.”

“What kind of pumpkin do you have?”

“A smiling pumpkin.”

“You think that’s realistic?”

“Not really.”

“Why?”

“Because usually pumpkins look mean.”

“They do?”

“Like Adams”

The beauty of the pumpkin is you can make it look like anything you want to. Give it stripes, change the color, make it patriotic, or even give it a hat. But there’s nothing you can do to make your pumpkin look as good as the Great Pumpkin.

“What do you think the Great Pumpkin really looks like?”

“I don’t know......A big pumpkin.”

“It’s orange and it’s painted like a jack-o’-lantern.”

“Well, it’s really big and it’s got a great big face. It’s magic”

“Where do you think he can be found?”

“In a patch”

Linus tells us every year the great pumpkin rises from the best-kept pumpkin patch...Chances are it won’t be this one.

“It’s been about a thousand rotting pumpkins that would have been a good crop if we hadn’t had a frost early in the spring, which set back the pumpkin so much that it wasn’t worth keeping up the patch.”

Meibaum says people are picky when it comes to pumpkins.

“We buy pumpkins like buying a car. They look it over. They want the perfect round pumpkin. And no one seems to realize that they all grow on their sides and they have a flat spot. They look it over and they go from one to the other. And I think that’s the best part of growing pumpkins is selling them and watching people pick them out.”

To some people, pumpkin means something totally different and delicious.

“Rene, wow’s the pumpkin pie?”

“Good, man.”

Seems like these guys know good pumpkin when they taste it. You can eat it, you can paint it, or you can carve it. But any way you slice it, Halloween just wouldn’t be the same without pumpkins.