http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/PALINcarp.html
http://www.grayco.com/cleveland/mott/sample4.html

It is, it is mesmerizing! About a million huge carp crammed together greedy for the tourist day old wonder bread. Yes, I did this as a child, yes I had a T-shirt proclaim "Pymatuning, where ducks walk on fish!" For some reason this fishy memory is intertwined with my remembrances of my visits to the pumpkin farm in the autumn.

In the north east mid-autumn when the leaves are still flaming, and hanging in their dying moments to sleepy trees. When the squirrels are frantic and the wind is sharp but not yet bitter. This is when the world seems to be nothing but orange and red and yellow, and the sidewalks and lawns are deep with leaves that whisper and splinter as they are waded through. This is the time to visit the pumpkin farm, where the pumpkins are piled in mountains impossible to climb- where the pumpkins range in size from what fits in a toddlers hand to what a toddler can fit inside.

I don't have any pictures from the pumpkin farm, I don't have any special memories, aside from the pumpkins and the atmosphere, but I treasure the memory, what there is of it-- those visits contain the indescribable glory of autumn in the north east, in the Sylvania by the Great Lakes.

I miss autumn, but not the long, long winter. Today I looked at a map of the county I grew up in, (searching for a pumpkin farm) and I wondered at how few towns were there. It's more agrarian than I remembered.