Look for a deep orange color that almost shines. No green spots, no yellowish cast. Next, feel for a hard shell. Rap it with your knuckles, there should be a solid thump in return. A 3- or 4-inch stem will keep in freshness.
Then you’ve got a premium-grade pumpkin.
Jack Chefas himself is Grade A, as in authentic. He has been operating a pumpkin stand on his property on Devon Avenue, just west of Clark Street, in Chicago for 51 years. In that time, he has never missed an October, not even three years ago when his two-flat was gutted and remodeled after an electrical fire.
He is 82 and recently confined to a wheelchair. That makes it more difficult for him to roam his front yard filled with about 20 tons of pumpkins.
Yet, Chefas has never considered calling it a career. His autumn tradition continues to sprawl in a neighborhood where, during World War II and for many years thereafter, families used to farm an open field across the street. That land is now occupied by a U.S. Postal Service branch.
Thousands of pumpkins are joined by piles of acorn and butternut squash gourds, mini-pumpkins, Indian corn and such holiday paraphernalia as pumpkin candles, pumpkin carving knives, yard lights, fake spider webs and ghost tree ornaments.
“It’s fun to sit here and talk to the customers,” said Chefas, who also has sold Christmas trees in front of his home for the last five decades. “I enjoy seeing the children. After all, Halloween is for the kids.”
Evidence comes from taffy apple profits, which are nil because Chefas tends to give the apples away to his youngest customers.
“We see lots of people on the weekend in October who come from places like Downers Grove and Arlington Heights,” said Sally Costello, a daughter of Chefas’, who arrives from Montana each October to help operate the pumpkin patch.
“They tell my dad how they used to come here as kids and how they wanted their own kids to see the stacks of pumpkins.”
“I even have regular customers who bring in their grandchildren,” said Chefas. “The little kids like the pumpkins with the painted faces.”
A special feature of the Chefas pumpkin patch is the imaginative lawn displays. Over the years, Chefas’ family (especially the three daughters and various grandchildren) has mounted scenes that included an operating room with pumpkin doctors and nurses depicting characters in “Ben Casey,” a hit television series of the 1960s.
More recent displays have featured “Sesame Street” characters and a politically correct, endangered-species wildlife preserve in 1995. This year’s theme is less flamboyant because Chefas’ wife was hospitalized for a week in mid-October, but there is still a fake graveyard, Frankenstein monster and the Tazmanian Devil cartoon character haunting the grounds.
“We also did the Beatles and Tiny Tim when they were popular,” said Regas Chefas, one of Jack’s five children, all of whom sold pumpkins during their formative years. “Whenever Elvis Presley came to town during the fall, my sisters always made sure to send him a special carved pumpkin. We all became pretty skilled with the pumpkin knife.”
Regas Chefas, 57, owes a particular debt to his dad’s determination to bring a touch of nature to the North Side.
About 18 years ago, his father lent him the money and land to start Gethsemane Garden Center, now a neighborhood keystone in the 5800 block of North Clark Street in Chicago.
“He also let me borrow his truck on days when he wasn’t using it for his delivery business,” which Jack Chefas owned along with a few local restaurants, said Regas Chefas. “I would drive up to Michigan and load it up with flowers. Then he came and helped me sell them.”
Gethsemane carries some of the Chefas pumpkins delivered from a farm in Big Bend, Wis. But the real Jack-o’-lantern sits a half-mile away on Devon Avenue.
“He’s the kind of grandpa everybody dreams about having in the family,” Martha Thomas, a friend who works at the garden center, said of Jack Chefas. “He adores his pumpkins.”
Special orders are no problem for Jack Chefas. One of his customers is a teacher who buys 20 carved pumpkins each year for the students at Herzl Elementary School on the West Side. Last weekend, another man bought a 175-pound beauty for $75.
“I wouldn’t let him have it until he showed me he could fit it in the car,” recalled Chefas. “Most of our 100-pounders are for show. Everybody likes to look at the big ones. People sometimes even kick them like tires on a car. We usually sell enough of them to support bringing in a bunch every year.”
The majority of pumpkins sell for about $6 to $8, less for smaller spheres. It seems a virtual bargain when Christmas trees from Nova Scotia on this same lot in December will go for as much as $100.
Chefas got the idea to sell pumpkins after visiting a fruit market in October 1945 that once stood at Ridge and Peterson Avenues in Chicago. The grocer had only four, nearly rotten pumpkins left and charged Chefas 75 cents apiece for them, a steep price considering a load of pumpkins could be bought for 2 to 3 cents per pound.
“I told the guy, `I’m going to give you some competition next year,’ ” said Chefas. “I sold about 10 tons that first year and increased my order every year for the next five years. Prices were a nickel, dime and quarter depending on size. It was a good way to make a little extra money to pay the mortgage.
“We attracted a lot of people with all the pumpkins stacked in the yard. It helped that our building was on a streetcar line.”
Another big help was the party atmosphere of annual pumpkin-picking. Chefas and his father, a Greek immigrant who cooked at the family restaurants, would host any neighborhood kids willing to ride out to farms in Wheeling to select the best pumpkins in the fields.
The reward was a few bucks and plenty of lamb stew, spaghetti and Grecian chicken.
“Kids started ringing our doorbell after Labor Day to find out when we were going for the pumpkins,” said Chefas. “But even with dozens of neighborhood kids, we couldn’t keep our stock some years.
“There were times I would ride out to the farms to fill an 8-by-10 (foot) trailer. When I got back to the house, customers would be claiming which pumpkins they wanted before I could unload them.”
