The (Not-So) Great Pumpkin

The quail are laying low. The hummingbirds have flown south. Yet one bird remains, flying more or less daily at the elaborate altars to fascism that The Duck! City MAGgots construct in their front yards.

I prefer the actual birds to the gnarly old featherless talon I flip to the yard signs, banners, and flags of the FreeDummies as I bicycle past their fauxdobe compounds in the foothills. Simultaneously a departure from and a riff on the traditional Halloween decor from China via Walmart, I suppose — but I like my goblins a little less, y’know, real. Y’know?

Now and then it seems I’ve pedaled into some hideous Mike Judge-Tim Burton reboot of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

Linus, who considers himself an intellectual but gets his news and analysis from Facebook and NextDoor, pesters Pendleton about adding a Kevlar “Security Blanket” to its line. He wants one for his annual Halloween stint in the pumpkin patch, just in case another assassin decides to have a go at the Great Pumpkin, assuming he actually shows up.

Charlie Brown is an “independent” (unless you count Social Security and Medicare). It’s a convenient political fiction that means he hasn’t got the stones to put a “Pumpkin 2024” sign in his yard for fear of offending the Little Red-Haired Girl, who has long since married someone with a job and a future.

Not so Schroeder, the lone clone of an unrepentant Nazi who fled Germany as the Allies closed in; he plays “The Horst Wessel Song” on a toy piano while gazing soulfully at a framed, life-size, autographed photo of the Great Pumpkin cheating at squash.

Lucy is now a brittle bottle blonde who’s “had some work done” to keep her job as a screeching harridan for Fox News. These days she kicks balls rather than snatching them away from Charlie Brown.

Peppermint Patty (field-hockey coach) and Marcie (librarian) share a one-bedroom apartment with a dozen or so rescue cats and not nearly enough ventilation. But plenty of joy.

Pig-Pen is actually Steve Bannon (because of course he is). He had planned a live podcast from the big Halloween party until the FCI Danbury warden refused to honor his “Get Out of Jail Free” card from the Goldman Sachs’ edition of “Monopoly,” in which all properties are Park Place and only poor people go to jail.

And Snoopy is an undercover K-9 informing on all of them to the FBI.

Hilarity ensues. Or not.

Happily, we still have our bicycles. Pedal faster, I hear Pumpkin music!