Pumpkin Jack and the Fountain

Mayor Jack

There are other villages, of course, in the Land of Fall; it wouldn't be much of a Land with only one village, now would it? There are the villages of Pumpkindale and that of Turkeytown but they are smaller than Scarecrow Corners and do not fit into our tale today.

"Jack", of course, is not the Mayor's real name, any more than the President's is "Mr. President" or a doctor's real name is "Doctor". It is just that that's his title, sort of like "Your Majesty" for a queen or "His Excellency", for a Duke, if this were some sort of story of times long ago. So everyone calls him "Mayor Jack" or just "Jack", if you are on more familiar terms with him. Most people call him that since he seems to be on good terms with everyone on the island.

Mayor Jack has been a man and Mayor Jack has been a woman. Mayor Jack is the title that the people who live on the Island give to the mayor of Scarecrow Corners and it comes from the story of Pumpkin Jack and the Fountain.

Now that we've explained who and what Mayor Jack is, perhaps we'd better explain something about this Land he's the mayor of. The Land of Fall gets its name from a very simple thing; it is almost always Fall there.

Oh, there is a quick spring with flowers blooming, there's a short summer that lasts about a week and there is a week or so of snow at the end of fall, but that usually doesn't last any longer than a few days, itself. Being of a different nature than the mainland, there are, of course, different ways and methods of doing things upon the island.

For example, there's no summer vacation from school, since there's not much of a summer. The schools' schedules and other holidays are also affected by it. There is no Labor Day or Memorial Day or Boxing Day, like in Canada.

"OH!" a school-age child might reply in dismay, "No summer vacation?" But wait, don't be too sad. Each class of students in the school at Scarecrow Corners takes off an entire week for Halloween and the same amount of time off for Thanksgiving.

Halloween always happens on a Friday, and the school always holds a lively costume party and parade for it. Thanksgiving is always on a Saturday, being that most of those who cook the Thanksgiving meal need some time to prepare it.

The children living on the Island didn't used to take off so much time for school, usually just a day or two if that much. It was study, study, study till the words seemed to leap off the page into your brain and fly around there like so many pigeons disturbed by a cat.

But the Pumpkin Jack, not one of long long ago, but the father of this one, the present one sitting on the train, the current holder of that position, was very instrumental in bringing about the celebration of Halloween as the children of the Land of Fall know it today, with all the costume parties, candy, apple-bobbing, hay rides and all sorts of things associated with it.

Where do I start? Where every good story starts, I suppose...

Once upon a time... no, really, it did start out that way, the story did, and I'm not one to change some part of a story just because it's not the Most Modern Thing, or because a lot of other stories start differently than that.

So, as I said, once upon a time, the seasons didn't change much in the Land of Fall as we've already discussed. Oh, yes, spring would bring the rains for a week or so, the hot days would come with ice cream and cotton candy, and the kids would slide down the hill on the snow behind the schoolhouse in Scarecrow Corners.

But those only lasted a few days or so, each one, and the season of fall in the Land of Fall went on for months; the chilled mornings, frost barely showing on the windowpanes; the dry, colorful leaves that covered the sidewalks and dusty lanes between the villages; the tangy smell of hickory and birch tree wood fires filling the air.