Carve-O-Lantern, or How Halloween Changed Forever
You know the traditional image of a jack-o-lantern? The triangle eyes and nose, the grinning mouth with a few scattered teeth here and there? I don’t recall ever carving one in my life. I may have, and my grandmother certainly did, but I cannot think of a single instance in which I did so myself. And yet I have carved many a jack-o-lantern, often several each year. The reasoning behind this seemingly paradoxical situation can be summed up in a compound word: Carve-O-Lantern. However, just because it can be summed up thusly doesn’t mean it should be, so please allow me to explain. A Wisconsin engineer by the name of Paul Bardeen came to the realization several decades ago (during the 1940s, as far as I can discern) that the time-honored tradition of hacking up a pumpkin with a kitchen knife or box cutter had some drawbacks. Specifically, the combination of knives and children inherent in pumpkin carving carried with it an alarming risk for lacerations and/or stabbi