Grown-Ups of the Corn
Every fall in the small town of Enfield, New Hampshire, it almost seems to happen overnight. One morning you notice the figure standing by the gas station. The next day it’s a couple sitting outside of the little bistro on Main St. A little further up the road you pass one outfitted in a puffy vest and waders, a fishing pole in the crook of its arm. By mid-September they are everywhere. I’m talking about scarecrow people.
This is not your amateur bundle of husks in a flannel shirt and floppy fisherman’s hat slumped by your mailbox like someone crawling home after a 3-day bender. These things are detailed, designed to blend in. Take, for instance, the figure dressed in a wedding gown with a long, dark-haired wig streaming underneath her veil, displayed outside the church in a way that absolutely doesn’t scream: CURSE BRIDE! What kind of Stephen King tenth grade essay contest nonsense is this? I also had a hard time believing there wasn’t one enterprising teenager in this whole town who couldn’t manage to arrange these things in some kind of obscene configuration. The cliché is true: youth is wasted on the young.
One of my first encounters with these creatures was several years ago. My family has lake property in the area and we spend a lot of time there. I had gone over to jog along the nearby rail trail on a cool fall morning. I was rounding a brief bend and noticed what appeared to be someone dressed in a black hoodie and sweatpants, maybe 100 yards away, standing off to the side by a patch of trees. GET OUT YOUR KEYS! TURN OFF YOUR IPOD! AIM FOR THE CROTCH! Screamed my reptile female brain. I slowed down a little. I skirted to the right as far as I could without slipping into the ditch on the side of the trail. I squared my shoulders. My heart stopped cardio thumping and went into an ohshitohshitohshit rhythm. The black clad person didn’t seem to be moving, which somehow made it worse. What the hell were they doing? Oh no, maybe they were in trouble. Great! Whole new set of things I am not equipped to deal with! What would Jesus do? Who cares? They could be faking! C’mon, we’ve seen this Lifetime original movie! AIM FOR THE CROTCH! Now I was coming up to where they stood. I turned my head to look at them and saw a face peering out from under the hoodie. It was brown with two eyes as large and white as saucers punctuated by black dots. A pair of bright, red circles for cheeks. Its mouth was also painted white, drawn up in a curve as wide as a slice of watermelon.
Goddamn you, small town U.S.A with your quaint fall traditions! Is it possible to sue an entire town for PTSD? Asking for a friend.
The scarecrow people are part of what I would classify as a folksy cabal made up of several rural and small town communities in the area. Their objectives seem clear enough to me: develop various community-wide rituals like apple pie festivals and Fourth of July jamborees to flaunt their homespun way of life as so much better than whatever night-of-the-living-dead grind of an existence tolerated by the rest of the planet. Also: don’t forget to contribute your quilting square for Margaret O’Brien’s 100th Birthday quilt! She kept the library running during the war years! I mean, c’mon, you people still pay taxes, right? At least tell me the Wifi sucks.
Because Enfield does not have the market cornered on this kind of weird and kitschy-cute seasonal happening. For the folks of Plainfield, a town about 20 minutes from Enfield, it’s all about the Pumpkin People. Here’s coverage from a plucky columnist for the Valley News newspaper:
Each fall, residents dress up Pumpkin People ranging from Halloween scenes to takes on popular culture. I write about the Pumpkin People or scarecrows in some fashion every year. But it never gets old for me. Even without seeing them all yet, I can safely say no two are alike. For more information, visit pumpkinpeople.org or Facebook: Plainfield Pumpkin People.
At first I was hesitant to Google that link. How could I be sure it wasn’t some kind of scam to get me to invest in Bitcoin or buy a timeshare in Reno? But it turned out worth the click. Unlike witnessing the abomination of seeing a person made of straw that is most definitely going to come to life and possess your soul, pumpkin people are more whimsical and silly. One person created a “Karen” pumpkin person with two speech bubble signs. One said “Call 911!” and the other said “Let me speak to your manager.” Well-played Plainfieldian. Very woke.
Maybe it’s precisely because the Enfield scarecrows are designed to mimic the Smiths and Jones of town doing ordinary life things--getting married, enjoying an afternoon fishing, or lurking suspiciously on a popular walking trail dressed like a ninja (SERIOUSLY WHO DOES THAT BUT MURDERERS AND ACTUAL NINJAS!? DO BETTER PLEASE!)—that makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. There’s nothing particularly glamorous or outlandish to see, just regular folks that could easily be anyone of us, going about their business in their beloved little town. What’s more real than that?