Numbers

I like numbers. I see numbers. No, not hallucinate numbers, but rather see them in my imagination. Imagination became by favorite word once I learned to spell it.

I don't see them like the photo at the right, and I don't see them in color. I see the "1" starting in the upper right hand corner of my mind and continuing clockwise like a 3-D coil, all the way up to 100. At "10" the numbers proceed in a bit of an upward  tangential line to "20," where I then see the sequence start again, but with depth. I see "18" nestled nicely in between "17" and ""19." When I do math in my head, I always see the numbers.

The Wall Street Journal's A-Hed piece has once again proved to be a blog muse. Yesterday's paper had a story about the business of providing Halloween decorations for clients and the large sums that are spent on what are sometimes very elaborate displays of pumpkins, skeletons, haystacks and other autumnal objects. There is a big, thriving business in Halloween these days.

A decoration like that shown here is not made by the homeowner with many trips to the supermarket, or a stop by a farm stand on a rural highway. No, it is done by a pro. There is nothing that can't be made into a business, and providing pumpkins has grown into one.

The reporter, Lane Florsheim, describes a nationwide group of businesses that satisfy the fairly recent desire to one-up the neighbors and have the grandest fall display in front of their house.

Perhaps the biggest of these entrepreneurs is Heather Torres, the founder and CEO of Porch Pumpkins. Whether Porch Pumpkins is going to go public via an IPO is not mentioned, but what is mentioned is that the business is so big that Heather and her firm fill "24 18-wheelers" of pumpkins to complete their commissions to decorate 1,300 households in Austin, Houston and the Dallas-Forth Worth area in Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas. They're sold out for 2025.

I respond to numbers. Someone once told me that when I tell a story I always manage to include some numerical part to the tale. Maybe it's true. As a septuagenarian retiree, other than my wife, no one hangs around me anymore, so there's no one else to ask.

The image of 24 tractor trailers! filled with pumpkins blows my mind. When I read that part I immediately thought of the Harry Chapin song about a truckload of bananas that crashes in Scranton, Pennsylvania. My mind works differently than others. Something always reminds me of something else.

I'm sure there are those for whom Harry Chapin's name means nothing, and knowing anything about his music even less. But Harry was a singer-songwriter whose popularity took off when he recorded a song called "Taxi."

His songs were long, and resisted being played on the radio. His songs were really short stories set to music. Mary Chapin Carpenter is a distant relative of Harry. They are fifth cousins.

Harry liked to drive fast, and as such he was impatient when he was going to miss his exit on the Long Island Expressway. He moved over to the get to the right lane at the last minute, hoping to clear the truck that was behind hum. Didn't happen, and Harry made an early exit of life at 38. No more songs. I think his son is now performing. I think there is a park here in East Meadow, on Long Island named after him. He passed away in Nassau University hospital on Hempstead Turnpike. The park is nearby.

Anyway, Harry wrote and sang a song, "30,000 Pounds of Bananas," about a news story that came out of Scranton, Pennsylvania of a truck that couldn't stop going down a hill, crashed, and deposited, in Harry's lyrics:

"It was after dark when the truck started down/ 
The hill that leads to Scranton, Pennsylvania, carrying 30,000 pounds of bananas...

...before he stopped and he smeared for four hundred yards along the hill that leads to Scranton, Pennsylvania

All those 30,000 pounds of bananas."

The song is better sung than read. Obviously, it was a mess and created a traffic delay of major proportions. The song is about a true truck accident on March 18, 1965. The driver died.

So, when I read there are 24! tractor-trailers on the road, filled with pumpkins that weigh, I don't know, 30,000 pounds plus?! I think what if one, or more of those trucks veers off the road or hits an overpass and smears a truckload of pumpkins across an Interstate? Talk about Smashing Pumpkins. The mind imagines.

Where in Texas is there acreage that grows these pumpkins? Or, are they brought in from Mexico? Will tariffs affect them? I'd love to see a drone shot of Texas growing these pumpkins.

Mr. Florsheim tells us of another company, The Curated Pumpkin (curate; a word for Gen Z)) started in 2024, "styling pumpkins on porches across Southern California. Options include the Rustic Charm, Autumn Elegance and the Grand Harvest. Business has already quintupled."

Want to use them this year? Sorry, bud, 2025 SOLD OUT. Try the wait list. I kid you not.

And who gets to remove all these pumpkins when the season passes? DUMPPUMPKINS.com? Disposal of 50 or so pumpkins would strain any ordinary municipal pickup. Leaving a Christmas tree out to turn into mulch is one thing. But a pallet load of ripening, smelly pumpkins is another.

When the kids were small, I always carved the pumpkin. My wife, from apartments in the Bronx, never heard of carving a pumpkin. After mince pie, pumpkin was always my favorite at the Automat.

There is nothing that can't be overdone and turned into a business.

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