PUMPKIN SECURITY [T, 10-20-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

PUMPKIN SECURITY          [T, 10-20-20]

Bob Teague, our Normal neighbor of over 50 years ago, was a traveling salesman, driving his Volvo all over Illinois for various companies at different times. To break the monotony, he visited various roadside attractions. One year, as Halloween approached, he stopped at a pumpkin stand, and laid eyes on the biggest pumpkin he ever saw. Now, Bob was not a profligate guy in any way, but he decided he had to have that pumpkin. What a Halloween jack o lantern it would make! It was sure to delight his own two grade-school daughters, and the other children in the neighborhood. But when he got it home, and displayed it on the front steps of his house, right beside ours, he realized that he had forgotten about David.

David was not very old. About ten. But he was already an irascible curmudgeon. Once as a neighbor man was up on a ladder, working on his house, David tried to kick the ladder out from under him. No particular reason. That was just the sort of kid David was. He did not like adults. Or much of anybody or anything else. Bob knew David would not be able to resist abusing that pumpkin.

So he called David over, showed him the pumpkin, told him its back story, demonstrated how proud he was of it. He didn’t give David a lecture on civic responsibility, did not threaten him, did not say he would tell his parents. Instead, Bob put David in charge of pumpkin security. “You’re the only kid in the neighborhood I can trust to keep the pumpkin safe,” Bob told David. “I’m counting on you.”

The pumpkin lived a long and healthy life, at least as far as pumpkins go.

One of the biggest laughs I ever got at a funeral was when I said, “This may come as a surprise to some of you, but Bob could be stubborn.” Yes, he was, but it served him well. He told me once how a fellow salesman one night on the road suggested they go out and “find some women.” Bob was insulted. “He knows I’m married. What kind of man does he think I am?” As he was dying, I asked him how he wanted to be remembered. “I was faithful,” he said, meaning not just marriage, but his whole life.

Bob was faithful, yes, but to values, not positions. He and I both supported the Viet Nam war in its first years. We believed what the government told us. We couldn’t believe that the government would lie to us—about “the light at the end of the tunnel”, about how many young boys were being sacrificed for the careers of politicians, about how corrupt was the puppet government we had set up, etc. I realized around 1967 that we needed to stop that war, but it took Bob longer. Remember, he was stubborn. But the day I knew the war was over was the day Bob said, “They lied to us. We’ve got to bring those boys home.” His stubbornness was in faithfulness to the truth.

He could have dug in his heels against David, but he knew the kid needed some worthwhile responsibility rather than some lecture about responsibility.

Whenever I see a big Halloween pumpkin, I think about my stubborn, smart neighbor, Bob, and I give a big jack o lantern smile.

John Robert McFarland

I hope people put masks on their jack o lanterns this year.