Pumpkins and Missles

Perched out on the end of memory branch 76, ready to drop onto 77, I wondered how many more branches are left on my tree. A bunch I hoped, there are still things I want to try like sky diving. Did I mention I'm crazy? In a friendly way.

In 1977 I'd contracted to design improvements to the Polaris/Poseidon missile guidance system at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and I found an apartment just south where I lived for two years.

"Hi, I'm Ian, I called about the apartment. I'll be here a couple years."

"Hi, I'm Dorothy, yes, it's a three room suite really and the long term rates are good." We settled on a price and I moved in that day.

Dorothy’s twelve year old daughter, Shirley immediately glommed onto me as the go to man for facts and “Kind Uncle Ian who'll rescue me any time I call” guy. I was new blood. There were several other long-term residents, a colony that protected one another, and I became the only single member. Shirley was our mascot and everyone watched over and protected her.

"Hi, I'm Shirley, my mom runs this place. She said your an engineer, what kind?"

"Electrical. I design guidance systems for missiles."

"Cool. You get to blow things up?"

"No, only the navy gets to blow things up."

"What a drag."

"I was on a submarine for a couple launches, on the surface support ship too."

"What was it like like to ..." and we were off. The young woman was a knowledge sponge and wanted to know everything.

We had a colony barbecue or party virtually every weekend, but no alcohol was allowed, only at the private ones.

“How’s it goin’, Ken, you’ve been out of town.”

“Yeah, huge pain in the butt. That problem with the gyros stabilizing? Caused a weeks stay at GE Ordinance in Pittsfield. It took me two days to find the problem and three to satisfy the bean-counters I had. Bureaucratic stupidity sucks! Got it fixed though and now they can build more systems for us. Talked to Dave earlier and picked up a dozen porter house steaks for the bar-b tonight.”

“Great, I ordered salads, drinks, deserts and anything else I could think of. Dave said he’d talked to you and he’d fire up the grill at five.”

“Anything else up for tonight?”

“Not really, but I did agree to help Shirley carve her pumpkin for the school contest. I have tonight and tomorrow so she can hand it in Monday.”

“I’m surprised she asked for help. She likes to do it herself. Drives her mother nuts.”

“She mentioned it and I offered and she said okay. We’ll start it about eight and finish it tomorrow. I’ve got a couple ideas.”

“Have fun with that.”

We cooked, ate, joked, danced, and generally had a great time. We started the pumpkin at eight.

“What do you want for a face?”

“I don’t know, what do you think?”

“It’s your pumpkin, you decide.”

“I can’t, I need help ...”

Eventually she settled on a snaggle-toothed, mouth with a twisted grin, round eyes, pupils and an off-kilter nose.

She’d picked a big one, 37 pounds, and we took a lot of flack about poor technique and pumpkin guts. I carefully worded a pointed suggestion on what they could do with them. Living with a bunch of engineers and their wives leads to that. At ten her mother made us stop, but we’d finished except for some final cleanup.

After everyone was in bed I went back and worked on it. I carved away inside meat to make thin sections with the darker skin and outside skin so the lighter shades of pumpkin made a contrasting, flickering face with a sneering mouth and threatening grin that appeared to move.

“You’ve changed it!”

“Just some shading, you’ll see.”

They were lit one at a time for judging and when Shirleys was one judge screamed and another fainted. They said it was too frightening to display so it wasn’t lit, but her reputation and popularity skyrocketed and she was asked to consult on many others. One day of lessons gave her enough to pull it off.

Shirley won, hands down, and I was a super-hero for my remaining 18 months.

Now I wonder where they all are.

I’m trying to find Shirley, I’d really like to know what she became, but forty years is a long time.