The Neighborhood Trumpkin

Clinging to rot is, frankly, embarrassing — but most signs point to better times ahead

We happen to live in a neighborhood that has, for the last six weeks or so, been plastered with signs supporting Joe Biden for president. Walking the dog is like participating in an endless (socially distanced) campaign rally.

These aren’t just the official red-white-and-blue “BIDEN HARRIS 2020” design. The witty sign-making that debuted en masse with the Women’s March in 2017 is on full display.

“IT HASN’T BEEN GREAT,” one asserts — planted alongside the owner’s trash bins. Across the street: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” and “OMG PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.”

There’s plenty of earnest hope mixed in with the snark, which I appreciate: “UNITY OVER DIVISION” is a popular message paired with the Biden-Harris logo, as are “TRUTH OVER LIES,” “HOPE OVER FEAR,” and “BUILD BACK BETTER.”

One yard is a notable exception. Half a block away, there lives a family of Donald Trump supporters.

Or so I assume, without having met them. At the end of October, they put out a pumpkin carved not with a face, but with blocky letters and numbers: “TRUMP 2020” flickered yellow in the dark for a night.

Lest anyone interpret this as a tongue-in-cheek holiday decoration, the pumpkin was accompanied by Republican placards. The jack-o’-lantern was its own kind of campaign sign.

Halloween came and went, and the “TRUMP 2020” pumpkin — the Trumpkin, as I’d come to call it — still squatted by the sidewalk.

It was there for my nerve-jangled walk on Election Day.

Then came Wednesday, November 4…

Thursday…

The days were getting shorter, but with critical swing states still counting ballots, that first week in November felt impossibly long.

It wasn’t until Friday that I noticed the Trumpkin was starting to decay.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is what every jack-o’-lantern does, on every porch, every year, as the fading daylight withers them and nights freeze their flesh. They soften. Their skin curls and they collapse in on themselves. Soon enough, the toothy grins of Halloween go gummy, in every sense.

Why was I surprised?

Somehow, it had come to feel like the rules wouldn’t apply for this particular pumpkin. Like it would sit out there forever, taunting me and the rest of our exhausted neighbors. It hasn’t been great. Enough is enough. OMG please make it stop!

But that was just a feeling. Time proved me wrong.

By Saturday, when the election was finally called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — when people opened their front doors to cheer and clap into the streets — when we could all hear the honking of a spontaneous car parade that celebrated its way across the city — the pumpkin had slumped so far into itself that the letters were barely legible anymore.

I was tempted to give it a good kick when I walked by at dusk, to finish it off.

Ultimately, I resisted the temptation. Although I’ve never met the Trumpkin family — I don’t know who they are — I know who I am. I’m someone who wants to be a respectful neighbor. Unity over division. I shook my head and let the pumpkin live another day.

It’s not living, though, is it? It’s already dead, and it has been from the start, ever since they carved a knife into the heart of it. Hollowed out, dark, and gloomy, it’s well on its way to becoming compost. It was only a matter of time before rot set in from within.

Am I being too heavy-handed, turning this dead pumpkin into a metaphor for Donald Trump and his one-term presidency? At least I haven’t cracked any jokes about mottled orange skin.

A week after Election Day, Trump himself, and many of his hangers-on, still insist that he somehow has any right to stay in the White House come January. This is patently false. The election was legitimate, and he lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College. While his team gins up lawsuit after lawsuit to contest the results, they’re being laughed out of court left and right.

At the same time, our neighborhood Trumpkin is still sitting out there alone in the cold, moldering away. No one is going to force its family to do anything about it. Freedom of speech; freedom of lawn décor. If they want to hold out until the bitter end, defiantly clinging to the stink of a corrupt man — well, they’ll only embarrass themselves, won’t they?

That, at least, is my sentiment on behalf of this one family and their loser of a jack-o’-lantern: embarrassed.

President-elect Biden expressed a similar sentiment in his press conference on November 10. “I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly,” he said of Trump’s refusal to concede. “How can I say this tactfully? I think it will not help the president’s legacy.”

The Trump administration and the Trumpkin have this in common: their end is inevitable, and has already begun.

The candidates, message, plan, and yard signs that will triumph into the new year? “BIDEN HARRIS,” who will “BUILD BACK BETTER.”

As for “UNITY OVER DIVISION”?

Well, our country has a long and difficult road ahead. I believe we’ll all benefit along the way from the leadership of a president who pauses to consider his words and expresses himself “tactfully.” Meanwhile, at the local level of neighborhoods, I’m not the only one in the vicinity who’s publicly supported the ideals of respect and rebuilding (and refrained from kicking in that pumpkin), so I’d say there’s hope for us all yet.

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