A 30-minute drive south of Syracuse, Cortland spends a year waiting to be something greater than a necessary stop on the way to Ithaca. It waits for the sounds of Big Band which mix with the smells of grilled hot dogs, homemade chocolate fudge and spiced apple cider. It waits for laughing children who play games for cheap prizes. But, most of all, it waits for the pumpkins.
A celebration of white, middle-class America, the 10th Annual Great Cortland Pumpkinfest, held this past weekend in Courthouse Park, sprawled out in a quickly cut montage of pony rides, sand art and curly cheese fries sprinkled with bacon bits and a topping of the American dream.
The water flowed orange in the park's fountain, and all around the water's edge, medium-sized pumpkins sat around praying to find homes. There was a great deal of competition, after all. The smallest pumpkins fit in the palm of a child's hand. The biggest weighed more than 800 pounds. The fashion-savvy pumpkins dressed up as Vikings, as cartoon characters or, most impressively and winning first prize for pumpkin style, as Hedwig, Harry Potter's snowy owl.
In all of that excess, the average, lopsided pumpkin - let's call him Joe - could only hope, look around and appreciate life in the moment. So, Joe watched as a young boy repeatedly slapped a bracelet onto his wrist. Wait a second ... "Hadn't slap bracelets been pulled off the market back when I was in fifth grade?" Joe thought.
An old man, wearing a pair of black socks pulled up to the knee, hobbled over to his laughing wife.
A girl read the sign, "Life with Jesus is like being a pumpkin," which the voyeuristic Joe thought was both strange and disturbing.
And, as Joe was watching, he was lifted up into the air by strong hands. For a second, he saw the whole world in some sort of sunlight, and knew right then why Cortland waited every year and why, in fact, he had waited as well.
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