Walking home from school that afternoon, I kicked through the fallen leaves with the sun low in the sky. I was in fourth grade, and that evening my friends were coming over for my first Halloween party. I’m sure school had required something of me that day, but I doubt it received my full attention.
There was a party to get home to.
My sister and I had been making decorations. We didn’t have much money for special things from the store, but I was a wizard with crayons, glue, construction paper, and scissors. Ghosts, witches, and skeletons were well within my capabilities.
I think my mother bought a few cardboard decorations, including a long skeleton held together with paper brads so his arms and legs could move. We made tiny ghosts out of Kleenex, their heads stuffed with tissue and tied at the neck with a piece of yarn, their eyes drawn on with a black marker. And we hung them from the ceiling light fixtures. My mother made cookies, punch, and popcorn. There was candy, of course, and pumpkins on the doorstep.
My sister and I also had a show prepared. I’d drawn backdrops from the book It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, along with separate pictures of the characters. My sister held the scenery just above the back of the sofa while I moved Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Linus in front of it and read the story aloud. The sofa was our theater. I can’t remember what the audience thought, but I remember how much fun I had making and performing it.
Some of the evening has faded. I’ve returned to that memory so often that I’m no longer certain which details I remember and which I’ve filled in along the way. Yet, the feeling has stayed: friends coming over, an evening of fun ahead, and a house bright and warm and glowing.
When I decided to paint Oak Hill Schoolhouse, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I wanted to make a picture of that little building, but I don’t have many fond memories of school. The ones I do have seem to belong to autumn.
I could imagine the schoolhouse lighting up the night, full of children’s voices. Outside, the air would be cool. Inside, something would be happening that you wanted to be part of.
That was the feeling I wanted to bring into Pumpkin Night. As I painted the windows and doorway, I thought about the warmth of that childhood evening, and the excitement of approaching a place where people were gathering. The child carrying a pumpkin, with a dog following along, has the evening still ahead.
Looking at the finished painting, there’s one thing I’d change. I’d add more leaves.
I put some around the tree, but I wish I’d spread them across the ground in loose, scattered piles, as though children had been playing in them. I can almost smell them when I look at the picture. Add that smell to the cool evening air, the voices coming from the building, and the glow of the windows, and it comes very close to what I remember.
Writing this now makes me want to go kick through some leaves and walk down the sidewalk in the cool evening air, knowing there’s a warm, bright house waiting for me, with good friends and something delicious to eat.
