Pumpkin makes the big move
By PAT FRIDGEN Echo Pilot

Sliding the huge pumki n into a truck is not easy if the pumpkin doesn't want to go. Barb Hall, far right, offers advice to grandson, Tom Morgan, and daughter, Sheri Morgan. Human ingenuity did win out.

Thomas Morgan picked a pumpkin out of his pumpkin patch Friday morning and put it into a truck. It took an hour.

The pumpkin was estimated to weigh more than a thousand pounds

Morgan, 19, entered the Atlantic Giant in the Longwood Gardens Weigh-Off Oct. 11 at Kennett Square. Getting it there was the dilemma.

His grandmother, Barb Hall, said they called many businesses asking for help moving the pumpkin. Blue and Gray Towing and Recovery in Hagerstown, Md. said yes.

"This was the only company that didn't laugh," she stated. "The receptionist said, 'We move anything.'"

Eddie Smith came to the Greencastle home the previous weekend for a trial run with a 478- pound pumpkin. The family agreed it made the second move run more smoothly.

Hall, Morgan, his mother Sheri and brother Charlie, 18, split the duties of the transport, at times watching, pushing, directing, holding breaths.

Smith backed his heavy duty wrecker as close as possible to the back of a U-Haul, once the monster was secured in straps attached to the boom.

"It's only held in with knots," said Sheri.

The truck was ready with a wooden pallet piled with foam and blankets. Since the boom was higher than the truck ceiling, it couldn't slip the pumpkin right inside. Eventually, Tom slid the pallet partway out onto a flat section of a ramp. Smith maneuvered gadgets to gently place the pumpkin on its bed, then slid it with the wheel lift back inside the truck. It was a little off center, but the family made do by cushioning it on all sides with 25 bales of hay.

"That was scary," Sheri said when the deed was done.

"I underestimated the size of that one," Smith said. "It's like a Sumo wrestler."

He said this, his first pumpkin job, was a pleasant experience because they didn't have to hurry. He added it to his list of strange assignments.

At the weigh-off event Morgan's pumpkin came in at 881 pounds.