The Chronicles of Chet

Another Halloween Passes

I remember when I was a child, Dad would take Jason and I to pick out our pumpkins and nothing really mattered to me as long as I had a pumpkin. Knowing me, I picked out the most interesting shaped thing I could find and more than likely Dad would have to slyly switch out the one I picked with the one that was good for the carving. The most I remember is picking out a pattern from the books, scooping out the goop inside, (losing interest in cleaning the pumpkin because there was slimey stuff infront of me) and then poking out about half the pattern before I lost interest in that and found myself on the couch infront of TNT Monstervision.. But you know in the end I always have the best looking carved jack-o-lantern, and it’s all because I had the best dad a kid could ever ask for.

When I was a kid I thought it was so easy to find the pumpkin I wanted… I was so wrong. On a nice Sunday afternoon Frodo, Daniela, and I set out on a mission to find our pumpkins. We stopped at a near by Lowes to look at the selection there, but their pumpkins were far too small. We then found ourselves at a Church in their pumpkin patch and there was so much to choose from! They had small, medium, and large pumpkins and I had no idea what I was looking for. Dad had made it look so easy when we went to choose pumpkins.  I tried as hard as I could to remember how he would pick them out and the things he would tell about choosing the right pumpkin. I knew I needed a large smooth face so that I could easily attach my stencil to trace and carve. I think I went through 10 different pumpkins before I decided on the one I would carve. Daniela found hers quickly, making a decision very close to the one I made as a child by picking the oddest one she could get her hands on..

The next order of business was choosing what I was going to carve into mine.. No longer entertained by the “spooky” book of happy halloween patterns, this time I had to have something great, something that wasn’t out there that I knew of. I started looking at characters from a few anime’s that I enjoy. Frodo playfully made suggestion “What about Gojira?”… He was right on the money.  What better way to celebrate than to carve The King Of The Monsters himself! I figured finding a stencil of this great cultural icon would be easy,…wrong again. Eventually, Daniela and I found a great side profile of Godzilla, so Daniela vectored it out for me in Illustrator, thus my pumpkin stencil was born. Frodo found his stencil, Daniela decided to free hand it, and soon the carving party was on!

For a couple hours we meticulously poked out dotted outlines along the shapes and curves of our stencils. Eventually, I used an craft knife to trace out the finer parts and make a better guide for my carving tools. Daniela on the other hand, you would have thought was whittling a log into a toy pony or something of the sorts.. Chippings of pumpkin were flying left and right; she also used a zester, and a cheese grater on the thing, and I think she also pulled out some sand paper.. Seriously, that pumpkin belonged on a project table in a high school shop class. Frodo didn’t seem to have any major issues with his stencil. After a few hours of planning, carving, and touching up our jack-o-laterns, we were done. All of our work and effort paid off in the end. Seriously these were some of the best pumpkins I have ever seen created and they can only be topped by what we come up with for Halloween.

Tags: Brock Samson, Godzilla, Halloween, Jack-o-lantern, pumpkin carving, Totoro