Poignant visit to the pumpkin patch

MOSES LAKE - Frankly, the girl with the pink coat was skeptical about the whole thing. She looked at the patch full of vines and leaves and bright orange pumpkins and asked, "How do you walk through there?"

One of the adult volunteers supervising the trip to the pumpkin patch told her she just needed to pick up her feet and step over the vines.

"Oh," she said, and it was clear that was not an acceptable answer.

The girl with the high top sneakers was OK with walking through the vines, but those pumpkins were heavy. And they weren't round. And it's hard to grab that stem.

Her friend sighed, and offered to carry the pumpkin back to the path, where adult volunteers were waiting with plastic bags. The girl in the high tops assented, and followed behind as her friend hefted the pumpkin and stomped out through the field. The girl in the high tops had just the slightest smile.

Of course, any second-grade pumpkin wrangler worth his or her salt won't bother with one of those little gourds. The boy in the blue coat had a pumpkin so heavy it tore out the handles in his plastic sack. It was so big he had to roll it back to the bus. But he was awfully proud of that pumpkin. He sat it down and posed with it, one foot on that pumpkin, just like it was the biggest trophy in town.

The second graders from Moses Lake's Peninsula Elementary School were on their annual field trip to the pumpkin patch Friday, hosted by second grade teacher Joan Dopps at her family farm.

It's a 25-year tradition for the second grade, and Dopps and her husband Tom loved it when the kids came for their pumpkins. This year was kind of different, because Tom Dopps passed away just before the annual visit. His funeral was Thursday.

But Joan Dopps said the pumpkin patch visit was just what Tom would've wanted. "This was Tom's thing," she said. Their three children annually picked out pumpkins, and the Block 40 4-H group, and eventually the second grade classes.

Dopps' friends and some fellow teachers, including some now retired, showed up to help supervise, and the pumpkin patch is such a tradition it has its own stories.

"I have second generation coming today," Dopps said. The parents of at least two second graders made a trip to the pumpkin patch in their day.

"Remember when we used to tie it to geography?" Dopps reminisced; the kids would stand at the top of the hill right behind the house and get lessons in topography.

"And the orange shirts," recalled a former teacher. The shirts, worn by the teachers, were a trademark for a while.

It was drizzling slightly as the friends waited for the bus, but eventually the sun came out, which is the normal way of things, Joan Dopps said. "In 25 years, we've only had one year where it was a little damp," she said.

"It poured, Joan. We got soaking wet," said one of her friends.

The second grade got off the bus, led by Joan Dopps' class, which had a plant and a special card for her. They took pictures in front of the pumpkin display designed by Tom Dopps. "Tom drew a map exactly how he wanted the straw bales," Joan said. (Tom's illness cost him the ability to walk.) Every second grader got an apple, grown on the Red and Golden Delicious trees in the Dopps' yard.

And then every second-grader trekked the quarter-mile to the pumpkin patch, and each got to pick their very own pumpkin in a tangle of squeals and shouts and big orange pumpkins and plastic sacks.

Right before the bus pulled out for the trip back to school, the whole second grade gathered round Joan Dopps and told her thank you.