I hated jackal lanterns.

This is a problem since my town is known as the jackal lantern capital of the United States.

Every year my town is host to thousands, if not millions, of carved horrors.

And it has become a point of pride for our midwestern town.

See, our town has been full of pumpkins since it was founded back in the 1800s.

And the town is filled with glowing, grinning gourds from September till April.

Just backyards at Greenhouses.

The public commons had three large greenhouses that grew pumpkins during the cold months,

and no citizen had to pay for a pumpkin.

I'm pretty sure it came out of our taxes.

I grew up carving, eating, and hating pumpkins with a red hot fury.

As a child, the glowing gourds had frightened me.

My parents were never sure why, but I was terrified of them.

So I was seven.

I refused to even carve one.

And I remember getting into trouble several times for pushing them off our front porch.

Never stopped a new one from appearing where the old one had been, and a stern talking

to about wasting pumpkins.

Pumpkins were a hot commodity in my town, and that's something to be squandered.

By the time I was seventeen, my fear had turned into a deep hatred.

We were sitting on the commons.

A big green expanse near the city hall, but acted as a sort of park.

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