Squash-house Valley 1

Squashhouse Valley 1 Harvest time Charly sat high up on his pumpkin, with his back leaning against the ten feet sawed-off stalk. From here, he could overlook the whole village, as his pumpkin was situated on a small hill. It was early fall and everyone in the village knew what that meant. Harvest time. When it was harvest time in other villages, the fruits from garden and field were stored, eaten, sold. That also happened here in the village. Potatoes just didn’t go into the cellar, because there were no cellars here. What for. When the harvest was over in the other villages and they were preparing for winter, the pumpkin village was busy. After the harvest came the construction time. It took very good tools and a lot of time to carve a good house out of a good pumpkin. Hollowing out was tedious and time-consuming. Sawing and drilling openings in the hard outer wall of the pumpkin was hard work. But it was worth it. With good care, such a pumpkin house lasts forever. The oldest house in the village was three hundred and seventy-three years old. Of course, that house was also a pumpkin, as were all the houses in the village. The village came into being in the first place because giant pumpkins grow here. You never know how many there are in a year that grow to a large enough size to become a house. There was one year when there were nine, all in a somewhat remote location. An independent, small settlement was formed. Mostly, however, there are only three to five pumpkins that are added in a year. Some, somewhat smaller ones, can also be used for storage if they have grown in the right place. The village council pays close attention to make sure no pumpkins grow where they are not wanted, because they would be in the way or change the village image. Charly lived with his parents and siblings in an old pumpkin that they had inherited from his grandmother. Inherited is the wrong word, because his grandma just moved away. “I can’t see pumpkins anymore and the mayor is getting on my pumpkin,” were her last words before she moved to New York City to spend her twilight years doing more opera, museums and urban bustle. Charly and his parents loved to move. They loved the outdoors and his parents are self-employed. His mother is an architect and travels a lot anyway when she has a job. His father does something with internet and mostly in front of the computer. Everyone in the village has Internet access. At least in the main village. Here on the hill, there is no power line going here, nor is there a water or sewer line. Electricity comes to Charly’s family from a water wheel in the nearby creek. So does the water. Dirty water is cleaned up at a plant, and internet and television are available through a satellite dish attached to the stalk of the pumpkin Charly was leaning against. Susi and Johnny were coming up the hill. Lasse had already seen them as they came out of their pumpkins. Hello, Charly, Susi called up to him. “At your favorite place, as usual.” “I’m coming down, Charly called and jumped up. Charly went to the flap in the pumpkin roof and ran down the two flights of stairs through the open hall in the pumpkin. He called out to his father, who was at his desk, “We’re going pumpkin picking.” “Have fun,” the father said. “We’ll catch up with you when your mom gets back from town”. Charly dashed out the front door. The door stand, as with most pumpkin houses on warm days always open. Like the openings for the windows, the openings for the doors were sawed out of the hard shell of the pumpkin. This was done in the pumpkin village by the carpenter. In the past, he had only worked with wood. Since he lived here, pumpkin shell was his building material, at least most of the time. All called the village Pumpkin Village in the Squashhouse Valley. Charly could have slid down from the roof of the pumpkin, because the pumpkin house was quite flat. But he would have fallen down the last piece and that was higher than he was and therefore forbidden and much too dangerous. Stupid Michel did it once and was still in the hospital. Stupid Michel was the son of the mayor. He was like his father. Very loud and always wanted everyone to hear what he said, did and thought. This summer he didn’t notice much himself, because he was in the hospital. Charly and his friends often visited him there. There in the city from houses that were not pumpkins. Everything was straight there. The streets, the houses, the rooms. It smelled like the city and not pumpkin like here. Today they would see  Michel again, because he was healthy again and did not want to miss the harvest of the giant pumpkin. After all, his father, the mayor would also give a long speech and Michel was also eager to get on the photo that would then appear in the newspaper and on the Internet. Charly Susi and Johnny ran across the meadows down the hill. The sun was shining, it was warm for the early autumn. The path they were walking on was sand. There were apple trees to the left and right, but they were no longer bearing apples. In the pastures, which had no fences here, there were a few cows standing and grazing while it was not yet too cold and there was still fresh green growing. Here on this side of the river there were few pumpkin houses and they mostly stood alone or had a pumpkin shed or garage. At the old water mill, the kids stopped. As usual. Of course, the mill where grain used to be ground into flour