You are in search of pumpkins. In the cold October rain, you head out of Mordor south on 71, the trail of tears and construction. Southern Ohio greets you with water towers, trailer parks, and Adult! Video signs. You pick up old friends, and head for the show.

The clouds part for the smell of fried food. You eat pork tenderloins. You eat breaded cheese on a stick. You go thirds on a blooming onion, but insist on your own piece of pumpkin pie.

You run into people you thought you’d never see again. You ask them what they’ve been up to.

“Just workin’,” they say. “Just workin’.”

You live in a city with many immigrants. A man sells t-shirts that read, WELCOME TO AMERICA, NOW SPEAK ENGLISH!

Your protest is a chuckle.

A woman in a scarf buys a Fried Twinkie. She shares it with a man wearing assless leather chaps and white tennis shoes. You are too busy gawking to notice the carnies are heckling your girlfriend.

Who are these people? you think. What is this place?

October’s here, so that means pumpkins. Front page of the Plain Dealer: Jerry Rose from Geauga County has grown a 1,344 1/2 pound pumpkin, winning the annual Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers competition. It measures 15 feet around, and weighs the same as a cow. As usually happens in these competitions, Rose won a ludicrous amount of money, and the pumpkin’s being shipped off to a Chicago hotel to be carved into a giganzo jack-o’-lantern. (Giant fruit can gain you fortune and fame: my dad’s buddy grew a giant, and sold it to a Six Flags in Fiesta, Texas for a patriotic pumpkin carving competition. He ended up getting all these fan letters from a 4th grade class in Mexico, prodding him for tips. He’s written an article on growing pumpkins in your very own garden.)

My interest? Growing up in Circleville, Ohio, home to the Greatest Free Show on Earth: The Circleville Pumpkin Show. Something that has to be seen to be believed, this year the festival hits on the 19th-22nd. The lady and I have been debating attendence–though my first inclination is to avoid it like the plague, the editor of Ohio Magazine told me he might be interested in a “Letter From…” piece for next October’s issue (these mags plan way far ahead.) So who knows? We might be in for a dispatch…in the meantime, check out the Miss Pumpkin Show contestants from my senior year in high school. Yowsa.