Each year Ray Moefield spends his two-week vacation at home in White Heath, harvesting hundreds of pumpkins, carving them, and scattering the jack-o’-lanterns across his family’s property. People come from miles around to look at the unique and eerie display. It all started 17 years ago by accident.
Moefield, 51, and his mother, Bonnie, were gardeners who competed against each other to see who could raise the best fruits and veggies. He decided to try pumpkins, a difficult crop to grow in central Illinois because high temperatures and humidity can turn them to mush. Moefield must have done something right because in no time he had lots –“60, 70, 80,” he recollects. “But I didn’t know what to do with them.” So he and Bonnie carved 34 for fun.
Word spread about the Moefields’ jack-o’-lanterns and cars soon were lining up on their rural road to take a peek. A television news crew from Champaign–about 16 miles east–paid a visit. He says that at least one has shown up every year since. Sometimes the story goes national.
“The first question the news always asks is, ‘Why do you do this?,'” he says. “I always have to think, ‘What am I going to say that’s not going to make me sound like an idiot.’ “
Not that Moefield lacks answers. He says “no one loves Halloween more” than he does, and his pumpkin carving has provided a good excuse for old friends to visit. Now it reminds him of special times he had with his mother, who died six years ago and who might have even loved it “more than I did.”
Not a whole lot happens in White Heath; the town’s not known for much aside from the Pontious Berry Farm. Dozens of neighbors volunteer to assist Moefield with the carvings and the display, which now includes a smoke machine, fiber-optic pumpkins, people roaming around in costumes handing out candy, and a huge hollowed-out tree. Strangers leave boxes full of candles at his house. Visitors place notes underneath and inside pumpkins, thanking him for his show. He gets about 50 letters a year; one came all the way from China.
In some years Moefield has carved as many as 500 pumpkins. They can weigh anywhere from a few pounds to several hundred–he grows three varieties and subscribes to a video series updated yearly by a pumpkin expert. He experiments with chemicals to keep the shells hard. He uses templates and imagination to carve them into the shapes of UFOs, cartoon characters, wolves, ghosts, aliens, and Elvis (his favorite). As many as 3,500 cars have driven by during the few days all the pumpkins are spread over the yard, according to his brother Charlie, who once kept count. The line sometimes backs up all the way down exit 169 on I-72 (the glowing pumpkins can be seen from the highway).
Moefield tried charging admission one year, but people he never met starting accusing him of greed. “I didn’t really want to do it,” he says. “When I mix money with it, it becomes work. A lot of people give donations. I like that best. That means something to me.”
He has been asked whether he considers his display to be art. Not really,
he says. People from the U. of I. Extension approached him about applying for
grant money to cover his costs. Moefield, who paints cars for a living, briefly
considered it, as well as moving the display to Lodge Park a few miles closer
to Monticello. But mostly, he says, this is just what he does on vacation.
Moefield’s pumpkin display takes place on the last three days of October from dusk until when the candles blow out (sometimes as late as 3 a.m.). To get there, take I-72 east to exit 169 and turn right onto White Heath Road. A few hundred yards in–just after the 40 m.p.h. speed limit sign–take the first street right (it’s unmarked). You’ll reach Moefield’s patch soon after the turn.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2003.
