The weather, the crowds, the packed streets, the busy shops, restaurants, bed and breakfasts; the gleeful fun of smashing a car with a giant pumpkin dropped from 200 feet up, or strapping an engine onto a formerly 700 pound gourd: by almost any measure, we could declare Pumpkinfest 2011 a glowing success.
True to form, the organizers built on the model they established in previous years, improving some features and adding new ones.
Like one of the giant pumpkins that inspired it, every year the Pumpkinfest grows exponentially. Already it dwarfs Damariscotta’s long running Oyster Festival and threatens to reduce the equally boisterous Pirate Rendezvous to just another date on the calendar.
It must be said that this event could not come off without literally thousands of hours of planning and hundreds of volunteers. It is likely if this event continues to grow, it will need even more volunteers and even more planning but at the moment it shows no sign of slowing.
As it was, with a giant, glaring exception, the people who came to Damariscotta sampled the local flavor and left with good feelings in their hearts.
As co-founder Buzz Pinkham is fond of saying, “It is the power of the pumpkin.”
That is all to the good.
Then, too, we would be remiss if we did not add our condolences to the family and friends of Marvin Tarbox Jr. who died during the Pumpkinfest parade.
At the time of his fatal accident, Mr. Tarbox was performing a relatively minor stunt that he had, by some accounts, performed many times before, with a group famous for similar stunts.
Based on the odds, Mr. Tarbox was in greater danger during his car ride down from Hancock County than he was when he died. Of course that is small consolation for his loved ones, or for the witnesses who will no doubt carry the memory with them to their graves.
It would be disingenuous to say the Pumpkinfest was an unqualified success, because that diminishes the passing of Marvin Tarbox. On the other hand, it would be equally inaccurate to say the accident ruined the Pumpkinfest, because for the most part it didn’t.
Sometimes in life, bad things happen to good people and sometimes at the worst of times, which is what happened Saturday. For all of our attempts to explain it or qualify it, it escapes us. Sometimes life just is.
