Folks, this is the one I've been waiting all summer to play for you.

Hank has a pumpkin in his back yard named Walter. As of yesterday's tape measure, Walter is estimated at 480 pounds, and he is living under a bedsheet on a little frame to keep the sun off his skin, which Hank reports has scared two meter readers so far. Hank's page tells you how you grow a thing like that: the Atlantic Giant seed, a whole back yard that used to be a lawn, burying the vines so they put down extra roots, pollinating by hand at six in the morning, and then the hard part, cutting off every pumpkin on the plant but one.

The season log is typed in from the notebook that hangs by his back door, and it's the best reading on GeoCities.us this month. A frost warning in May with a blanket and a trouble light. A hail storm in August with every blanket in the house and a crib mattress piled on top. A crack near the stem in September and a night he didn't sleep. His wife Carol appears throughout, counting how many times he goes out to look at it.

The weigh-off is next Saturday, October 2. I'll be refreshing that page like it's election night. Go read it now so you can say you knew Walter before he was famous.

Last week (Sept. 19): Mr. Whiskers' Cat Emporium. Donna in Dayton and her four cats, with a diary kept by the boss himself. The folks who run GeoCities.us made it Homepage of the Month for September, so I'm not the only one with ears.

Sept. 12: The Paper Airplane Laboratory. Ellie and her dad take over the far end of a school gym on Thursday nights with a tape measure, a stopwatch and forty airplanes. Folding instructions in words, because the scanner's broken.

Sept. 5: The Lemonade Stand Ledger. A twelve-year-old's annual report to her shareholders, with every cup accounted for. I've read quarterly reports from real companies that were less honest about a rainy weekend.

The whole list, all twelve, is on the survey.

From 1979 to 1986 I did the overnight shift on a small AM station in the Finger Lakes. Midnight to six, just me, a stack of records and the truckers. Every Sunday night I got to pick one record nobody had asked for and play it three times before dawn, and I lived for that. These days I dispatch milk trucks for a dairy co-op and nobody lets me near a microphone. So this is my Pick Hit of the Week, except it's a home page.

What I'm looking for:

• A real person behind it. A page where you can tell who made it and why they care.
• Something I didn't know before I got there. Pumpkins, clocks, neon, lemonade, I'm not fussy about what.
• It has to load before I give up, on my 33.6 at home after the late news.
• It has to be on GeoCities.us. That's my beat.

To nominate a page, including your own (everybody does, and that's fine), send the address to the request line, [email protected], with a line or two about why. I look at every one. New picks go up Sunday nights.

If you're picked, you're welcome to put the award on your page. Save the picture to your own computer, upload it, and link it back here:

You are listener number

One, two, three, four. If that's you, write in and claim your prize, which is my sincere congratulations.

Andy Noto · [email protected]
Last updated Sunday, September 26, 1999
© 1999 Andy Noto. The picks are mine; the pages belong to the good people who made them.