First I must tell you about lawyer John Baker of Little Rock and the woman named Shalah to whom I am wed.

They’re filled with this positive, can-do, ain’t-life-great spirit.

You name it and they’ll say sure.

They’re liable to suggest in midride to a movie that we run over to Mars for a second to see if there’s any sign of water.

Several years ago Shalah was chairman of the tour of historic homes in Little Rock. She got the idea that the ticket booths from the State Fair would be ideal to install at the tour’s entry stations in the Quapaw Quarter district. Somehow she wrangled permission.

She and Baker, who was some kind of subcommittee chairman, informed me of this arrangement early on the Saturday morning of the tour. That is to say I found myself unsuspectingly and disagreeably en route with them to heave these outsized, severalton wooden structures onto the back of Baker’s or somebody’s pickup, surely to crush the shocks and drive the frame nearly to the pavement along hilly Roosevelt Road - this as we crept at a pace of 6 or 7 miles per hour to relocate these monstrosities for two days, after which we would have to return them with a kept promise of having caused no harm.

So it happened a couple of weeks ago that Shalah, who would soon depart on a European sojourn and not be in town anyway, told me that she had run into Baker and that the two of them had decided that I would be the judge of the 6th annual Hillcrest neighborhood pumpkin

roll on the Sunday afternoon after Halloween.

This is Baker’s concoction. It’s about the hilarious joy of littering the neighborhood landscape with orange shards, thrilling kids of all ages, by which I mean to include those even older than I.

There were 98 children’s pumpkins entered and 28 adults’ pumpkins. Competitors rolled these squashy icons from atop Little Rock’s most San Franciscan venue, meaning the intersection of Hill Road and Midland in Hillcrest, down across busy Kavanaugh, and, if successful, south of Kavanaugh all the way to busy Lee Avenue.

A couple of neighborhood dads stopped traffic on Kavanaugh.

Nobody went to the trouble to get the street blocked off formally.

These were all can-do, ain’t-lifegreat kinds of people.

Pumpkins smashed against street signs. One knocked over a young boy, who hopped right up, laughing. A couple of cars got dinged in their driveways.

My job was to stand near Lee Avenue and try usually in vain to decipher the number of the upcoming rolled pumpkin through the static of my walkietalkie connection with Baker, who was atop the hill with a crowd

of scores if not hundreds. Then I was to mark in chalk the point at which these pumpkins left the street.

Or, if required, my job was follow these pumpkins to their landing places should they make it all the way across Lee, so that I would know the winners of places one through three.

Usually I would hear static and, from Baker, a single slurred number, perhaps “2.” It could be 22 or 62 or 92. Then suddenly there came this wheel-shaped, jet-fueled pumpkin at a speed of surely 30 miles per hour.

As I gave panicked pursuit, I glanced back to see a midget bagel-shaped pumpkin coming at me almost as fast, its number likewise wholly unknown to me.

Somehow - and I do not wish to reveal any judging irregularities - I managed pretty good guesses as to which of those excited young lads had rolled which of these winning pumpkins. There were no protests of the announced results, so far as I know.

You can see an instantclassic video of all this on YouTube, filmed, directed and produced by noted Little Rock filmmaker Chris Cranford.

Try this: //www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zAKNdW9Ib5M. Or just do a YouTube search for “Hillcrest pumpkin roll.”

Rolling a pumpkin cost $5, proceeds going to Camp Aldersgate. They said they raised $1,001. I have no idea where the $1 came from.

JOHN BRUMMETT IS A COLUMNIST AND REPORTER FOR THE ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU IN LITTLE ROCK.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 11/07/2009

Comments

To report abuse or misuse of this area please hit the "Suggest Removal" link in the comment to alert our online managers.

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.