Grandad's Wheelies by Jack Lasenby

Author:Jack Lasenby [Lasenby, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743487303
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

18

A PUMPKIN THE SIZE OF THE CARSHED

“I told you, didn’t I, about the big pumpkin?”

“The one you couldn’t get into the wheelbarrow?”

“This one was bigger again.” Grandad sat down in his wheelbarrow and pointed. “About the size of the carshed.”

“The carshed? How did it grow so big?”

“I fed it on my compost. They took photos and put them in all the newspapers.”

“What did Granny think?”

“She kept telling me to get rid of it, but what could I do? It went on growing and squashed old Crimson Glory, her favourite rose, and I had to shift the clothesline because she complained my pumpkin was keeping the sun off her washing.

“It was the 1930s Depression, people were hungry and had no jobs, and my mate Old Hum Drum suggested giving away bits of the pumpkin to anyone who wanted a feed, so we cut a door with a crosscut saw and dug out the inside with an axe and shovel. We gave away lorry-loads and sent railway wagons loaded with great chunks of yellow pumpkin to Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin.”

“Did that stop it growing?”

“It caved in like a basketball that’s gone flat. ‘We should pump it up,’ said my mate, Old Hum Drum. ‘See what happens.’

“I closed the door in the side of the giant flat pumpkin, and Old Hum Drum used the pump off his bike, but the connection got hot, so we had to pinch the pump off your grandmother’s bike and use the connection off that. We pumped for three days before the giant pumpkin stirred and shook itself, as if it was coming alive.

“‘It’s lifting,’ Old Hum Drum yells. We pump away, and the pumpkin rises off the ground. I get our fishing net, throw it over the top, and tie it to one end of your grandmother’s clothesline. We don’t want it just floating away.”

“What happened?”

“Old Hum Drum slung your grandmother’s clothes basket under the giant pumpkin, like the one under a hot air balloon. He climbed aboard and hung on to the end of the clothesline as the pumpkin tugged and tried to rise higher.”

“Yes?”

“Your grandmother came to take in her washing and saw Old Hum Drum in her clothes basket under the giant pumpkin, her clothesline stretching straight up into the air, and all her washing flying like flags.”

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