THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610060080
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH
DATELINE: ROANOKE ISLAND LENGTH: 90 lines
If the chilly, stiff breeze of early October isn't notice enough that the holidays are just around the corner, the pumpkins at the local produce stand are like little orange neon signs giving notice that the year is dwindling down.
Pumpkins are chubby chunks of summer sunshine come to earth. And at Island Produce in Manteo and other markets from Edenton to Hatteras Island, the glorious gourds seem to be waiting to become Halloween decorations and holiday desserts.
And unlike cantaloupes that get thumped and shaken, or tomatoes that get the big squeeze, there seems to be no grand secret in the search for The Great Pumpkin.
``To be honest with you, I don't really know the secret to picking out a good one,'' says Laurie Sadler, who owns Island Produce with her husband, Tony. ``Two of them can be sitting side by side and one will go bad and the other will stay good for months. We sold one to a man last year who kept his until February. It stayed good that long. But some go bad in a hurry.''
For most folks, The Hunt for Orange October is strictly a visual thing.
``Most people who try to pick out one look for a certain shape or a certain size,'' Sadler says. ``The best ones are the Haldon variety. They sit up. And they have a large stem on them. People like stems because they make the pumpkin look better. If the stems are broken off, people just pass over them.''
Breaking stems also is a serious breach of gourd decorum. A sign near a passel of pumpkins reads:
``Stems are nice to look at and pretty to hold,
But if you break it, consider it sold.''
The best Halloween pumpkins have another distinguishing feature:
``See the little ridges on the pumpkins?'' Sadler asks. ``People like those.''
Pumpkins come in all sizes. Some are as large as two bowling balls; others are smaller, about the size of a volleyball.
``A lot of people like those odd-sized orange pumpkins. But they're not really pumpkins. They're actually squash,'' Sadler says.
Some of the smaller pumpkins are the best for making wondrous holiday treats.
``They actually call them Pie Pumpkins,'' Sadler says. ``I've never actually made a pumpkin pie. But people who do say they're the best.''
Some pumpkin purchasers use some spooky methods to make their pick.
``We had a woman come in once and I asked if she needed help,'' Sadler says. ``The woman said, `I'm looking for a pumpkin. I'm going to talk to them, and the first one that talks back, I'm going to buy it.' She had a straight face.
``Anyway,'' Sadler continues, ``The woman walked around for about 45 minutes. Finally she picked out a pumpkin. `This one told me I should buy it,' the woman said. And she went on her way.''
For the record, Sadler says she has never had a customer carry on a collard conversation or some radish repartee. Just pumpkins.
Other customers use more conventional tactics.
``There was a little boy last year who sat down on this big pumpkin,'' Tony Sadler remembers. ```I'm going to sit on it until Mamma buys it,' he said.'' Finally, Mamma did.
This has been a tough year for pumpkins. Clinton, N.C., is one of the best places for growing them, but Hurricane Fran did a number on the pumpkin crop.
``We usually get ours from Clinton,'' Laurie Sadler says. ``But this year, because of Fran, we got these from a farmer in Harrisonburg, Va. The farmer told us he lost a lot of his crop because of the flooding up there. But these he got out of the ground two weeks before that hit.''
There was another year when pumpkin prospects weren't all that great. In 1991, radio commentator Paul Harvey reported that it was a sad year because no pumpkins were being grown in Pumpkin Center, Ala.
Pumpkin Center is about 15 miles east of the little coal town of Parrish, and it's about as big as the inside of a 1973 Buick Riviera.
A reader called the newspaper office where I used to work in nearby Jasper, Ala. ``Paul Harvey's wrong!'' J.B. Brasfield said, alarmed. ``I know a man who's growing pumpkins in Pumpkin Center. His name is Woodrow Twilley.''
We drove to Twilley's farm and asked about the pumpkins.
``I didn't grow any this year,'' he said. ``I've got some in another patch in Oakman. But not here.''
Despite our disappointment, we sat down with Mr. Twilley. We drank cold Cokes in the classic 6 1/2-ounce bottles. Mr. Twilley told us about his nephew Howard, who played on some of the great Miami Dolphins teams of the 1970s. He showed us his cattle and the rest of his farm. And he told us he had cancer.
But every day at the crack of dawn, Mr. Twilley got up and worked his farm.
``I like working with animals. It helps keep me going,'' he said. We visited for more than an hour. As we were leaving, he said, ``Come back again when you can stay longer.''
A year later, Mr. Twilley passed away. And every day, when I cross the Washington Baum bridge and see pumpkins at the neighborhood green grocer, I think of him - and how happy he'd be to see them.
Like all of us, Mr. Twilley liked pumpkins. by CNB