A Pumpkin Named Travis

Meet Travis. Travis is new to the world, just a few hours old. He joined the cadre of the ones with faces this evening.

 After several minutes of staring at the blank canvas that is an uncarved pumpkin, I knew what I had to do. I set about prepareing my tools: a knife, some newspaper, a spoon and a large bowl.

I set up on the floor of the kitchen. Keeping my carvings secret from my curious parents, I brought the knife to bear on the virgin squash. First, a careful cut around the stem, angled to make a seat for the eventual lid.

Scooping out the seeds and the goo was next, plopping it into the bowl beside me. Soon I had bared the inside of the as of yet still hole-less gourd.

The first cut was the nose, a carful triangle right in the middle of the soon to be face. The eyes followed soon after, with angles to allow as much light as possible through. All these peices I kept, knowing I would need them soon.

Cutting out the mouth came next, making an incision around the outside while leaving the teeth intact. The remnant from the inside quickly became a tongue, shaped just so.

After drilling holes for the ears with the knife, the pieces left over from the eyes and nose took shape to be placed back in their former homes, affixed with toothpicks. The skin from the tongue became the ears, cut in half and shaped a little bit.

The last piece to be attached, the one that finally made Travis real was his stately mustache.

After a dramatic unveiling to my family, with lights dimmed and candles installed, Travis found his home for the next few days on the kitchen counter. Shining brightly out of the dark annex of the house.

You now know the story of this particular pumpkin, a pumpkin named Travis.