We were stationed in New Orleans (or as we learned to call it N'Orlens) Louisiana, I think I was 11 that year, and since we were still making the yearly trek to Texas for family visitations, we always stocked up on the mega-fireworks! Well, I learned a lot more about the ins and outs of blowing up a pumpkin that year than I ever learned about the carving of them!

At any rate, when Ian (my eldest son) was about to turn 2 I decided to learn to carve a pumpkin for Halloween. This was 1993, almost 25 years since I'd watched my dad and brothers hack one up, and I'd never yet attempted one myself. So I decided to ask a friend who'd done a few of them for some pointers.

Luck was with me! I asked Laura, whose work you'll see soon, how to go about it. She showed me the typical style of cutting through and free-form face management. I thought it seemed like something even I, someone with no artisitic drawing ability whatsoever, could accomplish. Before leaving though, she also suggested one other style, something she'd seen someone else do before. She said that instead of hacking through the pumpkin, I could just scrape off some of the rind from the outside and let the light sort of shine through the skin. This sounded cool, so I decided what the hell!

Well, that started it! The very first pumpkin I ever did was a self caricature like the reproduction (that Laura did this past year) that starts off the pictures. The next one was Shakespeare. Talk about ambitious! Well, it came out even better than the one of me! Running out of ideas, I went ahead and bought one of those grocery store kits from a pumpkin carving company, and used this new "etching" style on one of their designs! The results were amazing! In fact everyone was so impressed at home, that I decided to start what eventually became 'THE TRADITION'. Being desperate for gigs I agreed to play Halloween night, and since everyone knew it was the deadest (pun intended) night of the year to play at a coffee house, I thought it would help to have something special to help set the show apart. So I took the pumpkins with me to work that night. Suffice to say you don't normally start a 'TRADITION' of something that's an utter failure! It was the best Halloween night they'd had, and just the beginning of what was to come!

As you can imagine, and soon see for yourself, I was up and running. The only thing that was holding me back was that I still couldn't draw! I had to find pictures and drawings from other sources that I could turn into my own stencils. This being the only set-back however wasn't that bad. I still had lots of ideas of things that I wanted to do, so I found ways to carve them.

Two years later Laura asked me to teach her this technique that she'd only suggested and I'd been able to perfect! She was an excellent learner, and that year started adding her pumpkins to the ones I'd display ever year at my Halloween show. It took only a short time before her kids Tori (then 10) & Spencer (then 8) could do them also. Now every year we're competing amongst ourselves to see whose is the most 'ooohhhed' & 'aaaahhhhed' at the shows! Laura has the eye for what makes a good stencil, Spencer has an incredible imagination at what will look cool, and Tori is an artist who very soon will be drawing her own stencils to use. For now they're still humoring me and letting me think mine are still a little ahead of theirs (deferring to my experience) (or age) but I think this was the last year for that!