Read Chrissy Like Chrissy on Facebook Follow Chrissy on Twitter Follow Chrissy's Pins Contact Chrissy

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Don't Eat Pumpkins


It's that time of year. Every cafe, restaurant, and Yankee Candle reeks of pumpkin spiced garbage. I HATE FREAKING PUMPKINS. So if you eat them, you should really hear this story...

How Pumpkins Became A Delicacy

Many years ago, not long after the Wompanoag Indians had befriended the local white settlers, two members of the Mashfeeld tribe gathered on the edge of a bog.

Sukonnet and Sukattet, two brothers, had reached the end of their rope. And they were sharing the rope.

"Well the damned Pilgrims ate all the shellfish, lobster, venison, and trout," said Sukonnet.

"Yeah, now the turkey are gone, too. And they have plundered the cranberry bogs. I told you we should have killed them all," said Sukattet.

"Well... there are these." Sukonnet held the round, orange globes, which had ripened in the first days of autumn, between his hands.

"That's a Pumpkin," said Sukattet, who knew that pumpkin was a Mashfeeld word meaning ugly assed squash that tastes like watery poo.

"It's all we've got," said Sukonnet. "They've eaten everything else."

"I'm not eating a pumpkin," said Sukattet.

"You'll starve."

"I don't friggin' care, I'm not eating a goddamned pumpkin," Sukattet insisted.

But the nights grew very cold, and the traps remained empty, and the pumpkin sat there staring at them outside their small mud lodge. Finally, October came, the time of the harvesting moons and frosts. Sukattet and Sukonnet were really at the end of their shared rope, and the knot they'd tied in it was loosening.

"This really is bullshit," said Sukattet.

And they carved open the pumpkin, cooked it, and ate it.

It sucked. They barfed.

So Sukonnet and Sukattet went to the white settlers and said to Miles Standish and the rest of them, "this is the pumpkin, which is a rare delicacy of our people. Pumpkin means 'large melon,' and it is very highly prized. You should eat this in stead of the ugly, spiny, hard-shelled lobster, which is poisonous."

Sukonnet then snickered and Sukattet kicked him in the shinn.

And so it was that the settlers began to eat pumpkin, though they were forced to slather it with brown sugar, cinnamon, and cloves to make it palatable. And school teachers were forced to eat lobster because lobster was gross and icky.

And Sukattet and Sukonnet became legends, and had streets named after them in the old hunting grounds of Mashfeeld... which remained a paradise even unto this very day.

2 comments ]:[ Add your comment:

Trisha said...

Can you verify the facts in this story? Like, is there documentation of it somewhere? Because if it's true, it's been left out of every second-grade history lesson since time immemor...imora...for a really long time, and I think it needs to be spread hither and yon so that I don't have to keep looking at signs and billboards and ads for Pumpkin Spiced Lattes and Pumpkin Muffins and Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Bread and Pumpkin Freaking Ice Cream - Is that an abomination or what? - because I loathe pumpkin with everything I have with which to loathe something. Thanks, you'll get on that, mmmkai??

Chrissy said...

I believe I was vindicated on FB.

Post a Comment