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Re: growing well-shaped pumpkins

>Denise,
>
>Do you (or does anyone) know where to buy a vegetable shaper?  It sounds
>like they work well on soft skinned fruit  (e.g., eggplant, zucchini) but I
>wonder if they'll work on pumpkins.   The other problem is that pumpkins
>are likely to break open.  A big time grower out here (Doc Pumpkinstein)
>told me once that he tried for a rectangular pumpkin using a speaker box.
>The box broke instead.
>
>We might have to use a metal form with metal straps to shape pumpkins.  I'm
>VERY tempted to try.
>
>        Dan Shapiro

Folx...  you might wonder what kind of person wants to make cubical
pumpkins..   Please allow me to introduce Dan Shapiro...

This is the man who goes to supermarkets and buys the oddest shaped
vegitables he can find.

This is the man who helped build a reconstruction of a 1540 blast furnace
to cast cannons.

This is the man who buys literally TONS of pumpkins each year to have a
halloween party, wherein he invites people from all across the US.  He
clears out his living room, and puts plastic 6 feet up the walls.  And then
gives out various knives, hatchets, chainsaws, drills, etc., and allows his
guests to carve to their heart's delight.  They then line the streets with
jack-o-laterns, and people from all over the Stanford Area come to see what
he's done this year.

This is the man who made a doorbell out of pipe-organ pipes, and a hand
pump.  To ring the bell, you pump like a maniac until a discordant moan
echoes through the neighborhood.

This is the man who has a door lock that vaguely resembles a cross between
a pachinco machine and puzzle... You drop the balls in holes in the door,
and listen to them rattle and drop into place.  And you have to know what
to do to get the balls in the right place to actuate the hand forged
locking mechanism.

This is the man who's front room is littered with bits of satelitte from
the Chinese Missle crash, with Tibetan Gourds, with lead bricks, and
various other obscurata.

This is the man who was practicing his violin, and heard a voice come
through the house window "You'll never make it to Carnegie Hall"... and who
then made it some 20+ years later (although he was dancing).

This is the man who made one of those little conservation of momentum
devices that you see on people's desks.  Normally made out of ball bearings
and string - but his is made out of bowling balls.

This is the man who spent a couple of days in the blistering Arizona heat
to help build a reproduction 1300's trebuchet, which could launch
grapefruits off of the property.

NOW, having introduced him... I am going to be mean to him  *grin*

Dan

A cube?  A paltry CUBE?  Even _I_ could do a cube.  Why not a dodecahedron???

*nasty chuckle*  (Now he'll have to do it!).

Tom

(P.S.  Why do I know so much about "this man"?  He was my thurifer during
my wedding, in 1982.)

(P.P.S.  You ask "What in heck is a thurifer?"  Answer:  The person who
carries the thurible, of course!)
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