
DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9711020133

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   71 lines

PUNGO PUMPKIN BASH IS A FARMYARD SMASH

They were the Halloween leftovers. Nobody's pumpkins. Unsold, unloved and, unfortunately for them, unarmed.

On the quiet Pungo farmland of the Henley family, pumpkin after pumpkin met with foul play.

It was the First Annual Pumpkin Fling, and otherwise sociable people paid good money to bowl, bash and hurl our helpless orange brothers - all to benefit the historic Ferry Plantation House.

Pumpkin flings usually fall in the days following Halloween. The reddish-yellow, gourdlike fruit that are not fortunate enough to be gutted and hacked into macabre faces and stuck on somebody's porch are used in community games. The events are so-named for a popular event in which people compete to see who can throw a pumpkin farthest.

Despite inclement weather early in the day, families journeyed to the farm to bid in an auction, buy goods and play games on the farmland not far from where Grace Sherwood, the Witch of Pungo, once lived.

James P. Durkee, 23, justified his part in the games.

``They've all committed a crime,'' he said, pointing to a pile of pumpkins. ``They're sentenced to annihilation by hammer.''

Durkee refused to elaborate.

Many pumpkins fell at the hammer work of Christopher Fess, 4, who used a massive mallet to unleash rivers of pulpy pumpkin goop. His soon-to-be uncle, 23-year-old Navy man Gherard Perry, helped.

They drove the hammer downward. One victim's rind flew apart, showing vulnerable soft orange flesh when the sticky chunks landed. Once-mighty stems lay amongst the blades of grass caked in slimy pumpkin guts. Through the grass, a soft wind blew.

Yet the pumpkin thirst of Christopher Fess had not been quenched.

``I want to smash another one,'' he informed the sailor.

``All right,'' Perry conceded, sticking more tickets in a can. ``Go get another pumpkin.''

The boy chose. They placed the soccer ball-sized pumpkin on the block.

It rolled off - but did not get far. Perry put it back on the block.

``Ready, bubba?'' Perry asked.

``Yeah.''

The hammer fell.

Danielle Lenaghan, 25, ran a pair of games in which pumpkins were bowled into several empty 2-liter pop bottles and small pumpkins were tossed, bean-bag style, through holes in a board.

Ann Marie Healey, a 20-year-old student at Virginia Wesleyan College, discussed the legend of the Witch of Pungo during hay rides that looped through the Henley farmlands.

Healey has been involved in the effort to restore the plantation house and turn it into a center for local history.

Winkie Henley, 57, drove the tractor while Healey told the tale of Sherwood, who did some of her ``gaol'' time in a cell once at the site of the Ferry Plantation House. Henley's dog Ginger followed alongside as the sun began to set.

Back at the game area, the field ran orange as folks squared off and launched pumpkins for distance at $2 a toss.

Attendance was hindered by poor morning weather, but folks had a chance to - as Henley said - ``do anything you could think to do with a pumpkin.'' ILLUSTRATION: TAMARA VONINSKI photos/The Virginian-Pilot

Elizabeth Sewell, 8, plays a pumpkin ring-toss game Saturday at

Henley Farm in Pungo, Virginia Beach. The Pumpkin Fling featured

hayrides, an auction, and games involving the smashing, mashing,

pulping and flattening of leftover Halloween gourds.

Rebecca Richardson, 4, watches another pumpkin explode from a

well-aimed mallet smash at the Pumpkin Fling in Pungo on Saturday.

The fun was to benefit restoration efforts for the Ferry Plantation

House.