Booker's Blog

The blathering idiot was out in the country, exploring nature, enjoying the fall leaves changing color, trying to center himself, as one of his friends put it. The blathering idiot wasn’t sure what centering meant of what it would feel like once he had centered. The last time he had had anything to do with centers was back in kindergarten when the teacher would point out the different centers. The one for block. The one for stuffed animals. The one for books. He asked his friend if that was what centering would be like now?

His friend had smiled and told him, maybe, because he would feel as if everything had a place and everything was in its place.

So, the blathering idiot was wandering around the woods in the country, ignoring fences and property boundaries.

Good fences may make good neighbors – though somebody had told him the poem meant the opposite of that – but he was not looking for neighbors. He was on the quest for his center. He wanted to feel like he did in kindergarten when he had put the last block back I block center and the last book in the book center.

That was why he was surprised when he stumbled across men in military uniforms guarding an area out I the middle of day lily farm. He saw them and when they saw him, several of them yelled “Stop!” and then they pointed their weapons at him.

The blathering idiot raised his hands, just as he had seen in the movies. He next expected somebody to say, “You have the right to remain silent,” but nobody did.

Just as he was about to say something, there was a loud Phoop.

A few seconds later there was a loud thump and the blathering idiot saw a battered, old, splatter-painted VW microbus rock from side to side as something large and orange punched it in the side. The remains of the punch scattered everywhere.

A pumpkin?

His eyes moved toward his left and it was then he saw the large black propane tank with a long barrel curling up from it like an elephant’s trunk, except this one was attached with bolts and didn’t look like it was meant for somebody trying to center himself.

“Son, I bet you are wondering what that contraption is.” It was a general. At least the stars attached to his epaulettes indicated he was a high-ranking something.

The blathering idiot said nothing. If there was anything that running for the highest office in the land had taught him was that at times it’s best to say nothing.

“Well, son, word will be out soon enough I guess, so I might as well tell you, that way you get the skinny from the horse’s mouth.”

The next secret weapon.

“That over there, son, is a pumpkin cannon. But it’s not just any ol’ pumpkin cannon. It’s the nearly supersonic launching pumpkin cannon. Even on the low pressure setting, it can launch an eight pound pumpkin over a mile and strike the target with a force equal to 200 miles an hour at impact.

“And you know what the beauty of all this is? Why, it’s all made with off the shelf technology and off the shelf materials. We can turn out thousands of them, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands in days. Our only limitations are making sure we have enough propane or other gas in the tank to power the pumpkin and the pumpkin crop for that year. Once our weapon is adopted by the military, we will start to work on a Strategic Pumpkin Reserve where we will store enough pumpkins to arm a war in a bad pumpkin crop year.”

The general walked over to the blathering idiot and laid a hand on his shoulder. Surprisingly, the blathering idiot had to look down to look eye to eye with the general.

“And you know the final beauty of all this young man? We don’t leave any annoying ordinance on the field of battle. There will be no shrapnel that will cause problems with the United Nations and their silly little rules or the Geneva Convention or any other treaty. The worst that will happen is the pumpkins will rot on the fields of battle, planting the seeds for future crops.”

The blathering idiot had to admit there was merit to this idea. It might even appeal to the left and right politicians. It would save money, which would appeal to the conservatives and be more environmentally friendly, which would appeal to the liberals. But then he wondered what would keep somebody from taking this idea and instead of pumpkins, using cans of pumpkin filling. It would be more compact, have a metal casing, and would be the reasonable next step. The step after that might be finding something so mix with the pumpkin, so that when it hit the target the volatile mixture would explode on impact, creating more impact damage. And then there would be….

In a matter of a few short years, it would be no different than it was now. After all, the world’s most power explosions were first created in a valley where there used to be farms and woods and trees turning color in the fall, just like here.

Suddenly, sadly, the blathering idiot felt very un-centered, and what was even worse, he no longer wanted a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.