Pumpkin Drop

You know how people see a good dish on TV and write down the recipe and go home and fix it? Well, Jason Whonoe goes them one better. He's not a cook, but he is an inventor and when he sees things like pumpkin canons or underwater camera he goes to his workshop and gets to work. We were over last fall for the pumpkin shoot. He used an old dead car down by the fence to his property as a target and on the very last shot of the day he hit it. Tomorrow night, New Years Eve, Jason has prepared a pumpkin drop to mimic the apple in New York or the peach in Atlanta. I was over yesterday when he was testing it. He rigged up this little device on the side of his tallest silo and fixed pulleys and cables to a shelf that holds a large pumpkin. This is all hooked in to his computer and he had his oldest boy, Seth, who is a senior at Mississippi State, write a program that will lower the shelf in exactly eighty-four seconds. It will be real important that he his the button at exactly at that point so the pumpkin will reach the ground at the right time. This is really a moot point because everybody who comes in will be instructed to move their watches ahead by an hour and half. New Years will come to the Whonoe farm at 10:30 so we can all get to bed. There ain't many around here who have ever seen midnight. I asked Jason why he used a pumpkin. I said pumpkins are more for Halloween or Thanksgiving. Jason told me he just couldn't find a decent watermelon this time of year.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle

Coming soon: More Tales of Harper (an ebook on Amazon)