The Great Pumpkin

This morning I ran three miles at 6am. As I ran toward Christ Lutheran Church there were bright lights cutting through the darkness in front of the building and on the ground were lots of something all piled up. As I got closer I realized that they were having a fall pumpkin patch.

The pumpkins are arranged all over the ground where kids can walk up and down aisles to pick one to take home (although there was no one there @ 6am). A light rain was falling and it made the pumpkins shiny. It made me feel like it was fall … except that the humidity was about a thousand percent and it was almost eighty degrees. I was wet as much from sweat as I was from rain.



As I ran on past the “great” pumpkin patch all I could think about was being a kid. It’s funny how this time of year makes everyone want to be a kid again. But I thought about how much the Stunz family liked to watch Charlie Brown movies at a time when cartoons only came on Saturday morning, it was cool to have one on TV at night. I thought about It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. How Linus missed out on trick-or-treating because he was convinced if he stayed in the pumpkin patch he would see The Great Pumpkin. How his self-proclaimed girlfriend Sally would faithfully sit with him, not for a view of a great pumpkin but just to be with Linus. And how Charlie Brown ended up with a ghost costume with too many eye-holes and a rock in his trick-or-treat bag at every house. The best thing about a good story is that you see yourself in at least one of the characters.



It was good to be a kid. Sometimes it still is. And memories like that help a run seem short.