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Show PUMPKINS. Boys down in Ohio used to go to the county fair every fall, and the biggest thing there at each agricultural display was the pumpkins. We have no distinct recollection just how big those pump-kinf pump-kinf were they must have weighed almost a ton, for it required a couple of men to put them into a wagon when the display of agricultural products was at an end. If they didn't weigh a ton, at least that was the only means of expression which boys have that would adequately express a very great weight. These displays of the plebeian fruit were always the center of interest for a small coterie of rival pumpkin raisers, and they were guarded with watchful care' by the men who had captured the ' blue and the red ribbon on the size of their product. prod-uct. . But the pumpkins themselves were not nearly so interesting as the dreams of pumpkin pie which the size of the fruit suggested could be made from them. "The pumpkin pie of the quiet country home down on the farm in Ohio contained more of the elements of happiness than a gohPpiece of equal size does in these latter days. For the gold piece could not purchase the appetite which boys of those days had, and neither could it purchase a pumpkin pie of the same golden hue. It may seem strange, but the recollection of those early years finds nothing noth-ing so alluring as the work of gathering the big yellow pumpkins from the cornfield. Wre never did raise any big enough to capture a prize at the county fair, but they were big enough to make pies out of, and such pies I The mornings were always frosty when we went out to the cornfield, opened up a corn 9hock, peered into it and discovered the glorious fruit which had been placed there to escape the ravages of the early frost. They were . cold, but- the anticipation of those glorious pies that mother used to make warmed our hearts even if k did not warm our hands. For the yellow pulp when stirred logether with.a few spices and put into the oven in a dough of surpassing richness certainly made a combination combina-tion not found - anywhere else on the face of the earth. It must have been that there was some love mixed into the combination, for there certainly is nothing of the earth earthy that can equal the dreams of elysium awakened by a six-inch triangular triangu-lar piece of that pie when balanced on the tips of the fingers and bitten off in chunks as large as the mouth would conveniently, and sometimes inconveniently, incon-veniently, accommodate. Science has made many, improvements in the culinary art, as in everything else, but science is impotent before the mysterious mysteri-ous transformation of the fruit of the vine of the cornfield. And even with the pure food law in full operation, there i3 nothing of this modern age that is worthy of comparison with it. The pumpkin pie of the farm is the one thing science cannot improve. |