Why I Love My Country

Today we began the day like many other families -peeling potatoes, dicing apples, basting turkey and cleaning up the house. When our guests arrived we paused to say hello and then carried on with preparations. Making mashed potatoes and slicing turkey are always reserved for the last minute at our house so that we can enjoy them at their peak.  I tend to think that mashed spuds are quite tasty a couple of hours after they come off the stove, but my purist husband and daughter hold out to the last minute.

After my husband announced that it was time to eat we did just that, with a great deal of thanks I might add, for the bountiful meal provided.

So it was a typical wonderfully Thanksgiving, with food, family and friends, and time to watch the Cowboys afterwards.

But after everyone left, pronouncing the day a success, we three sat down in the living room to watch Pumpkin Chunkin, a sport, or should I say a contest, that to me says " we are in America" .

Pumpkin Chunkin.

I had never heard of it until my more informed daughter and husband turned it on and settled right in. I mean, it's not as though I was planning anything special for the evening... but a show called Pumpkin Chunkin?

 It is not a sport for the elite. And the participants are not highly trained athletes who listen to relaxing music as they pace about, preparing for their turn on the field.   The game, or sport, call it what you will, takes place in a corn field and its premise is fairly simple-minded, as all good games are. If you can throw a pumpkin farther than anyone else you win. The variety of pumpkin- throwing machines, from trebuchets to air guns elevates the game from being a backyard Sunday afternoon sort of activity to something more serious. After all, these pumpkins travel three quarters of a mile.  But it is what it is, a game that is all about throwing pumpkins as far as you can using a variety of instruments that won't destroy the pumpkin on lift-off.  Simple and elegant. Something good minds can turn to without being corrupted by the effects of a culture gone to the dogs.

And perhaps most important of all, there is no one telling those pumpkin chunkers that they can't heave pumpkins to kingdom come.

America truly is the land of the free and the brave, the land of Pumpkin Chunkin, and I am proud to be a citizen. I am proud that we are not too sophisticated to want to throw pumpkins about, yet not so dumb that we can't design fairly good machines in our spare time that will throw the pumpkins long distances. Yes, I know that trebuchets have been around a long time, but I bet those French people  in the Middle Ages never thought of using them to hurl pumpkins for fun. And air guns...now we are talking some sophisticated methodology.

Yup, I am proud to be an American, and even though I can't throw a pumpkin myself more than a foot or two, I will never eat pumpkin pie again without thinking of those who give up all their spare time to throw pumpkins so that the rest of us don't have to. We can just put up our feet, sit back and watch them do it.