New to the game

     On Saturday Oct. 17, I set out on a mission, a journey to find my pumpkin I carved at Pumpkin Lobotomy the day before. Although my pumpkin was not the most creative and looked like thousands of the others, I was sure I was going to spot it.

    My mother and sister came to visit me from home and arrived at noon Saturday. We headed to the dining commons to get something to eat, aiming to gain energy for the long day ahead of us and before all the festivities downtown started. Once we finished eating, we walked through campus, past Randall Hall and headed to Pumpkin Fest.

    When I first saw Main Street, I was in shock. This being my first Pumpkin Fest, I didn't know what to think. Seeing thousands of people gathered in one place at the same time was nothing short of overwhelming.

    I wanted to take in everything, explore each street and look at each pumpkin. My mother and sister were soon annoyed with me because I had to look at each and every carving and stop to take a picture of it.

    Passing the first pumpkin registration booth was the start of the pumpkin volume explosion. There were small pumpkins, normal sized pumpkins, and huge pumpkins.
When I saw the enormous pumpkins, I kept asking "Are those real?" "Wait What!", "No seriously." They were in fact real, and I learned this from taking a picture with my sister, sitting next to the big hunks of vegetable.

    Other photos my mother forced my sister and me to take were ones with Batman and his Bat-Mobile and a scary pumpkin head guy. My mom took photos with movie-murderer Jason pretending to stab her and the Statue of Liberty.

    As we walked down the pavement of Main Street, to the right were food booths. Some were selling sausages, apple turnovers, hot and cold apple cider, and my favorite, candy and caramel apples. And of course I had to buy one; I got a caramel apple with rainbow sprinkles.

    There was also a booth selling fried pickles. I'd never heard of and never tried these but I felt adventurous, and so tried the fried pickles.

    After that new experience I went back to what I knew, and gobbled up fried dough and kettle corn. The line was so long but worth the wait for the delicious popcorn, which was made right in front of Festival-goers.

    There were so many pumpkins scattered throughout the streets; some cute, some ugly, some dirty, and some multicolored. Some of the pumpkins were used as advertisements for Price Chopper, Dunkin Donuts, and many other businesses.

     The streets off of Main Street all had different attractions down them as well. Down one street was another pumpkin tower along with scores of additional pumpkins. On Gilbo Ave., near Lindy's Diner, bands performed, tents were set up with vendors selling all sorts of items, from jewelry to blown glass pumpkins.

    When I was looking here, my sister wanted to stop in the thrift store, and while we were in there, a little girl dressed up like a cat wanted these blue high heels and kept asking her mother for them.

    Later on, we saw the little girl and her mother come out of the thrift store with the blue high heels that the little girl had wanted so badly. I couldn't help but take a picture of the little girl dancing around in a cat suit with blue heels. It was so cute, and seeing this reminded me  of when I was a little kid.

    Pumpkin Fest's main goal was for everyone to have fun, and to travel back to when they were young, and just enjoy a day of eating junk food, dancing and dressing up.

     The best part of Pumpkin Fest for me were the pumpkin towers lit up in the evening. The scene was so pretty, with everyone gathered by it, taking pictures, staring up and enjoying its magnificence.

    The longer I stood there, the more I found something new in the pumpkin carvings.
And I won't lie; I still was looking for my pumpkin on the towers.

Brittany Murphy can be contacted at bmurphy@keeneequinox.com.