Take a drive through Charlotte's Elizabeth neighborhood this week and you may pass a big wall made of pumpkins.
For the past two decades, the "Great Pumpkin Wall" has appeared in front of different homes in the neighborhood, just east of uptown, with hundreds of pumpkins carved by local kids and their families.
This past Sunday, the neighborhood celebrated the wall's 20th anniversary with a bluegrass band strumming tunes in Independence Park.
Kids bundled up in hats and sweatshirts selected and then carried pumpkins to a man with an electric saw, who sliced open the tops.
"Pumpkin guts!" Caleb Gray, 8, exclaimed as he pulled open the top and looked inside.
"There's nothing better," the pumpkin slicer responded.
The kids scooped out the insides with spoons and plastic scrapers. In one patch of grass, a crisis erupted when a ladybug fell into a pumpkin picked out by 6-year-olds Lincoln Roetting and Chase Murtiashaw.
"It's like, dead," Murtiashaw said as his friend searched for the bug in vain.
At one picnic table, a girl carved 1989 in tribute to Taylor Swift, and a group of teenage boys finished a monstrous-looking jack-o'-lantern mutant.
"It's got a giant mouth, two buck teeth, a tongue that we shoved a pencil in so it can move, and a nose with, like, pencils shoved in," said 14-year-old Jayson Lochman. "I feel like we did pretty good."
The Elizabeth Community Association provided the pumpkins — roughly 200 in total — and in just a few hours, the finished jack-o'-lanterns will sit side-by-side and illuminate the neighborhood's "Great Pumpkin Wall."
Boards and gourds
This year, the 60-foot wall was erected in front of a home at 2017 Greenway Ave., owned by Rob and Dale Hall, who've been hosting it in their front yard since 2022.
"Actually if you Google the 'Elizabeth Pumpkin Wall,' I don't know how it happened, but it's pinned here," Rob Hall said. "I didn't do it."
The wooden posts and shelves were constructed 20 years ago by a small group of neighbors who were interested in politics and woodworking. They called themselves "The Woodpeckers."
Architect Jeff Dalzell, who now lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, came up with the wall's design, but won't take credit for the idea.
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"Good architects borrow, but great architects steal," he said, smiling.
Dalzell borrowed — or stole — the concept from a neighborhood in Chicago where he used to live. There, neighbors created a pumpkin wall out of wooden boards and cinder blocks.
"And it was so much more than the sum of its parts," Dalzell said. "When it was all assembled and lit, and it was like, 'Oh my gosh.' The orange is so beautiful, and all you have to do is stuff them with twinkle lights, and people from the neighborhood would be attracted to it."
Carving out a message
In 2004, the Elizabeth wall's first year, the Woodpeckers added a political message to their pumpkin wall. Huge letters outlined in blue lights spelled out "Kerry," for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
In following years, the wall displayed the word "Truth." In 2007, it displayed the date President George W. Bush was to leave office: "01/20/09," and in 2008, it said "Obama."
"It was actually vandalized," said John Short, with the Elizabeth Community Association. He said in 2012, when the wall again said "Obama," someone tried to light the wall on fire. You can still see blackened marks on the wood.
In 2013, the Woodpeckers gave the wall to the neighborhood association, which has since chosen less political "words of the year" like "Together," "Community" and "Vote."
"The word is typically something that celebrates the community, is about togetherness (or is) an inspirational message," Short said.
This year, neighbors voted for the word "Thrive." The two runner-ups were "Elizabeth" and "Forward."
'Thriving' at 20
Later in the evening, hundreds of neighbors gathered in front of the wall with strollers and wagons to see the wall light up.
Elizabeth resident Hardin Minor led the countdown wearing a red ski suit and light-up gloves. As the lights flicked on, the neighbors cheered and scrambled for a picture.
Jeff Dalzell, the architect, said seeing the wall still glowing after 20 years was "moving." He pointed to two pumpkins carved by himself and his son.
"He's 27, and we carved pumpkins together," Dalzell said. "We don't do other things together, except argue about politics."
Chalk it up to the spirit of the pumpkin wall. It may be 20 years old, but true to its word-of-the-year, the Elizabeth neighborhood's "Great Pumpkin Wall" is still "thriving."
The Elizabeth neighborhood's "Great Pumpkin Wall" will be on display at 2017 Greenway Ave. through Oct. 31.
