A MEGA MESS
Cleanup crew puts city back together again
By Dave Eisenstadter
Sentinel Staff
Published: Monday, October 18, 2010
When Kristy A. Leggett looked out her West Street apartment window Sunday morning following the Keene Pumpkin Festival, she thought she was looking at a dirty street in downtown Boston.
Trash covered the street, and hundreds of pumpkin bits from the 22,943 jack-o’-lanterns that decorated Saturday’s festival were sprayed everywhere.
By Sunday afternoon, however, much of the cleanup had been completed.
“They definitely had their work cut out for them,” Leggett said of cleanup crew workers and volunteers.
Previously disenchanted with the festival, Leggett’s interest was rekindled when her daughter was born two years ago. Now attracted to its family-friendly atmosphere, she attends regularly and went this year with her daughter and her fiance, Adam K. Crothers.
She and Crothers agreed that the piles of pumpkin parts remained on the streets later than any previous years they had seen, but that the work eventually got done. They suspected that a lack of volunteers on cleanup duty was one of the delaying factors.
Keene Police Lt. Shane C. Maxfield said the cleanup went better than usual because crews got an early start, though he also said Central Square and Railroad Square were exceptions to this.
“There was a lot of pumpkin carnage at those locations,” Maxfield said Sunday.
Ideally, crews and volunteers should clear pumpkins away before people begin to kick and throw them, Maxfield said.
“As soon as one person starts smashing, everyone wants to join in and it spreads like wildfire.”
