the great pumpkin

Hands down the best jack-o-lantern I’ve ever carved.  And it only took me six hours.

I was a fourth year in college, and John was in his second year of med school.  We had bought our pumpkins together at Carter Mountain, and we wanted to carve them together.  Of course, we didn’t get started until 10:00pm.  John insisted that we do some of those insane stencil-and-carve designs, and he picked out the headless horseman for me.  I don’t remember his design, but it must have been inevitably more simple, because he completed his task in an hour and a half and, intensely protective of his sleep schedule, left me to finish mine by myself on his porch until 4 o’clock in the morning!  I woke up a few hours later on his couch, pumpkin guts in my hair and my nails shaved down to the bed from futilely scraping at the interior of said pumpkin.  Well worth it.  The kiddies loved it.

And boy were there ever some number of kiddies.  If there was ever a time to bring out the big pumpkin-carving guns, 2005 was the year.  I lived on the Lawn that year, and all the kids of Charlottesville and Albemarle would flock there, trick-or-treating to all of the 54 rooms and 10 pavilions that surrounded Jefferson’s original Academical Village (I swear TJ invented the word “academical”…is it a real word yet?).  In fact, so many kids come year after year that each room needs to get clubs and organizations to “sponsor” the room in order to supply the requisite amount of candy to feed the masses (roughly $400 worth of candy per room).  Once again, so so worth it.  Trick-or-treating on the Lawn is my favorite of the Lawn traditions.

And my favorite 2005 trick-or-treater…1st Lobster (because “there was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus” —Love Actually):

And the view from my front door at 30 East…