16 • SMASHING PUMPKINS
OctoberDriving through our little town in late fall, still a bit love- struck for
Tuscany’s charm, I began to see my home through new eyes. We don’t
have medieval hilltop towns here, but we do have bucolic seasonal decor
and we are not afraid to use it. “Look,” I cried to my family, “we live in
Pleasantville.” They were forced to agree. Every store window had its own
cheerful autumnal arrangement to celebrate the season. The lampposts
on Main Street had corn shocks tied around them with bright orange rib-
bons. The police station had a scarecrow out front.
As I have mentioned, yard art is an earnest form of self- expression
here. Autumn, with its blended undertones of “joyful harvest” and “Trick-
or- Treat kitsch,” brings out the best and worst on the front lawns: colorful
displays of chrysanthemums and gourds. A large round hay bale with
someone’s legs hanging out of its middle. (A pair of jeans and boots stuffed
with newspaper, I can only hope; we’ll call it a farm safety reminder.) One
common theme runs through all these dioramas, and that is the venerable
pumpkin. They were lined up in rows, burnished and proud and conspic-
uous, the big brass buttons on the uniform of our village. On the drive
home from our morning’s errands we even passed a pumpkin fi eld where
an old man and a younger one worked together to harvest their crop, pass-
ing up the orange globes and stacking them on the truck bed to haul to
market. We’d driven right into a Norman Rockwell painting.