The Pumpkin Contest

Every October, the small town of Maple Falls in Vermont holds a giant pumpkin contest, and for ten years the winner has always been the same man: Mr. Walter Pike. He is eighty-one, he wears the same red hat every day, and he talks to his pumpkins as if they were his children. "You're not big enough yet," he tells them every morning. "Eat, eat."

Two years ago, the Ramirez family moved into the farmhouse next to his. They had come from a village in Guatemala, where Mrs. Ramirez's father had grown vegetables all his life. Mr. Pike was polite but a little cold. "Pumpkins are a serious business here," he warned them. "It isn't a game for beginners."

This spring, the Ramirez children, Daniel and Rosa, planted one single seed behind the barn. They watered it every day and gave it a secret mixture their grandfather had taught them, made from coffee grounds and chicken manure. By August the pumpkin was so big that the children could sit on it together. By September it was such an enormous pumpkin that cars stopped on the road so people could take photos.

Mr. Pike pretended not to notice. But every evening he walked along the fence, looking at it out of the corner of his eye. One night Rosa saw him measuring it with a long tape. "It's too big," he said when he saw her. "Too big for its own good. It will crack before October." It didn't crack. It just kept growing.

The day before the contest, there was a new problem. The pumpkin was too heavy for the family's pickup truck, and too wide to go through the barn door. Mr. Ramirez tried to borrow a trailer, but every farmer in town was using theirs for the contest. "We aren't going to make it," Daniel said sadly. "We don't have a trailer that's strong enough."

That evening someone knocked on the door. It was Mr. Pike, in his red hat. "I have a trailer," he said. "It's the biggest one in the county. I built it myself." He looked at the pumpkin for a long time. "It might be too small for that monster, but we can try."

It took six neighbors, two ropes and a lot of shouting, but at last the pumpkin was on the trailer. It was so wide that it hung over both sides. Mr. Pike drove it to the fair at ten miles an hour while the children walked beside it like bodyguards.

The Ramirez pumpkin weighed 1,402 pounds. Mr. Pike's weighed 1,215. It was the first time in ten years that he had come second, and everyone waited to see his face. He shook the children's hands and laughed. "Such a beautiful pumpkin," he said. "Now, about that secret mixture... I'm old enough to keep a secret, you know."