There is an autumnal tide that pulls upon man and beast alike in October. The birds feel it. When leaves drop from branches like so many tears, shed to mourn the death of summer, a force calls birds to fly away to places they can only vaguely know.
We feel it, too. One morning, we awake to find a brilliant blue sky framed by crimson trees and are visited by a strange restlessness. We cast our gaze outward to the country beyond the familiar landscapes of the city.
There are pumpkins out there. We must find them.
Most of us who now live in or around the city are generations gone from the farm, our ancestral roots torn from the terrain where time is marked by the cycle of seasons.
Nevertheless, we feel the urge to return. Trekking to the supermarket to fetch some paltry pumpkin from some plebian pile doesn`t fully gratify our longings.
No, this is a quest of the mind. We search not just for a pumpkin, but an experience.
Yes, the pumpkin farm beckons.
And never mind that such a country pumpkin may cost $8 or $10 or even $15-twice or three times the grocery store variety, although both were conjured from the same rainwater and sunshine.
We seek the orange orb, nestled in its natural setting, vine still attached, the pumpkin that was preordained to be our very own.
So one Saturday, the youngsters are packed in the van, the maps unfolded and refolded to show the lines running to places like Kane and McHenry Counties, and we embark.
Then, it appears-a vista punctuated by a million glowing globes, where horses pull wagons of hay and rusting farm implements lend the look of a rustic still life.
But wait-there are 10,000 others who have arrived first. In an epiphany, we grasp the powerful allure of autumn. We must share our bucolic experience with practically the entire darn city.
Like everything else today, Halloween has become an elaborate enterprise. On a bright clear day last week, Bob Muir, his wife and his three youngsters journeyed to where concrete meets cornfield on their own pilgrimage for pumpkins.
”Holy cow, what a production,” said the 42-year-old Muir of Carol Stream. ”Get up, get the kids, the stroller, the bags into the van. Drive down here.”
”Here” is Bengtson Pumpkin Farm in southwest suburban Lockport.
”We go into the haunted house, the straw tunnel, the corn maze. We get lunch. Then we take the hayride out and pick up the pumpkins. Then we`ve got to get home,” he said. ”It`s like an all-day event.”
Every October, thousands of families from the city and suburbs partake in this ritual. What many find is a little bit country, a little bit Disney World, but mostly an entertainment experience that lightens wallets by $30 or $40 for admission fees, hot dogs, candy, caramel apples, cider, spider rings, plastic devil forks, corn stalks and-oh yes-pumpkins.
And thousands of children are bused to the suburban fringes in the weeks before Halloween, to go a-pumpkining on field trips and after-school day-care programs.
The pumpkin patch ritual is really the second jewel in the triple crown of autumn outdoorsy experiences.
The first comes in September-apple-picking time. Visit a pick-your-own orchard such as Bell`s in Lake Zurich, and the pickers are more plentiful than fruit flies. In December, the season culminates with the cut-your-own-Christmas-tree-and-drag-it-out-of-the-field experience.
But Halloween is special. Ask any youngster, and he`ll testify to that.
By the beginning of October, every self-respecting garden center and roadside vegetable stand has been transformed from a place of fertilizer and bushes into a mini-amusement park. Petting zoos, haunted houses, you name it. But in recent years, the full-blown pumpkin farm has been the state of the art.
True believers journey to Bengtsons, once a family dairy farm that today is part farm stand, part Great America, a paved pumpkin land featuring the Haunted Barn, the Halloween Shop, pony rides, hayrides, a genuine pick-your-own patch and dozens of animated figures.
They travel to Johansen`s in Bolingbrook, where pumpkin perusing is accompanied by a 4-acre petting zoo (admission, $3), where more than 300 farm animals temporarily reside in brightly painted wooden homes spread across the land as in a fairy tale village.
Or they drive to Sonny Acres in West Chicago, where two police officers are called out to help with traffic on weekends and where the four-week fall festival generates about 70 percent of the farm`s annual revenue.
”Halloween is the second-largest holiday of the year in terms of sales,” said Bob Feltes, co-owner of Sonny Acres. ”A lot of people don`t know that. It`s also the funnest holiday of the year, unlike Christmas, which can be kind of stressful.”
Of course, that`s not to say that this new kind of Halloween experience doesn`t carry pressures of its own.
”Dylan, get off of there!” Brenda Skiles yelled at her rambling 4-year- old last week at Sonny Acres, as he crawled up a pile of small pumpkins.
”You`re not supposed to be up there!”
”I`ve been watching him all day,” the 23-year-old woman from Naperville said, sighing. ”But that`s what having kids is all about, really. You`re always doing that. He`s just really excited to be here and making himself a little tired.”
So was Feltes. A thin, affable man who sported a beaten-up black hat garnished by autumn leaves, he confessed that about this time every year he starts getting pooped.
And no wonder. It takes six weeks to set up the haunted barn and the painted signs, to stock the apple barn and the costume shop, bring in the farm animals and arrange the straw tunnels for youngsters to play in.
That is followed by more than a month of long days for Feltes, the other members of his family who work the farm and the 65-plus staff members they hire during Halloween to help out.
”We call it pumpkin burnout,” he said. ”You`re seeing pumpkins all the time, day after day, not having a day off. Seeing so many people, emotionally it drains you. Physically it drains you.”
Every year in the decade since the fall festival took off, Sonny Acres has seen bigger crowds, Feltes said. The pumpkin festival seems to have touched a chord with families, while it also helps small farmers keep their businesses alive.
”I think people just like getting out in the country,” Feltes said.
”Though this ain`t the country like it used to be. It`s kind of an illusion of the country. Most people don`t even know the difference between hay and straw. I have a farm in Woodstock-now that`s the country.”
Over time, Feltes has become something of an expert in fall festivals, so much so that he has put together a fall festival workshop for farm marketeers interested in breaking into the field.
The promotional brochure promises instruction in topics such as ”Haunted House Setup and Operation,” ”Halloween Merchandising Methods,” ”Developing Unique Fall Adventures” and ”Effective Parking Lot Layouts.”
”It`s a way of life,” Feltes explained. ”We`ve been doing it so long it`s like getting up and putting a pair of socks on. In October, people just come out.”
Dan and Dave Bengtson know what kind of business they`re in. In the last decade, they`ve gone from ordinary pumpkin farmers to entertainers.
”That`s what we are,” said Dave Bengtson, 33. ”It`s our own good time. We love it.”
A witch cackles in front of the Halloween shop and emits smoke from the broomstick. An angry George Bush twists Saddam Hussein on the rack. The dirt over a freshly dug grave rises and falls, as if someone beneath it is breathing. An embarrassed skeleton sitting in an outhouse wonders out loud why the door is open and whether he can use the newspaper.
The Bengtsons are open just one month a year, but they spend the other 11 months planning and building on their farm. They have worked every day since March, they said. In October, it takes more than 150 people to run Bengtsons. The farm has logged more than 50,000 visitors.
Last week, as they noted the parents and strollers and youngsters and teens and schoolchildren tromping around on the pavement, they talked of growth.
”There`s no limits,” said Dan Bengtson, 32.
Added his brother, ”It`s getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
