The answer is: Yes. Until things turn around the rest of us will be forced to purchase those Buddy Holly-type glasses. They are similar to the first pair my parents bought for me when I started wearing glasses in the first grade. They were thick, black plastic frames that came conveniently pre-broken with masking tape holding the nose bridge together.

I’m just kidding. This is America. We will still be able to afford high-end glasses for generations to come. Why am I so confident? Because as we bounce along in these turbulent economic seas, clinging tightly to our financial dinghy, fighting off the sharks of recession, the hypothermia of slow growth and the failed bilge pump of unemployment, I see a glimmer of hope far off on the leading indicators horizon.

And what, you might ask, is that glimmer? And how much, exactly, have I been drinking?

The answers, in reverse order are not enough and a pumpkin.

More precisely, it was thousands of pumpkins. These days, being October and with Halloween just around the corner, everywhere you look there are large cardboard crates filled with bright orange pumpkins for sale. You might be thinking, “So what? There are crates of pumpkins for sale every October.”

Well that would be my point, if I was going to make one. Pumpkins have become such a staple every autumn that few of us ever stop to consider where the hell all these pumpkins come from.

I mean, there are a lot of pumpkins out there. Someone’s growing them, someone’s shipping them, someone’s distributing them to the stores, and someone is selling those pumpkin carving kits that, from the pictures shown on the front of the box, convinces your children that by purchasing it anyone can carve an incredibly intricate pumpkin design that is only slightly less impressive than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

This is an entire industry based on an agricultural product that we don’t even eat, except for perhaps a few cans of pumpkin pie filling. Acres and acres of agricultural farmland are used to grow what is essentially a squash on steroids. It is being done, not to feed the masses, but so that dads all across the United States can place the innocent pumpkin on the kitchen table atop spread-out newspapers, hack off its top, scoop out several pounds of pumpkin guts, and attempt to carve a scary jack-o'-lantern face without severing a major tendon in our hand.

Once the pumpkin has been disemboweled, disfigured, placed on the front steps, and nearly set on fire by the lit candle inside it, I estimate it takes on average about five seconds before a delinquent teenager comes along and smashes the jack-o'-lantern in the street.

Think about the implications. Our economy has an entire industry based solely on growing a specific type of genetically freakish produce that is in high demand for only a few weeks of the year, the only purpose it serves is decorative, and which generally ends its useful life scattered in the middle of the road in thousands of pieces of pumpkin shrapnel.

Does any of that sound like an economy on the verge of collapse?

Granted, if the economy continues to turn south, even the pumpkin industry could suffer. This might lead to the federal government giving out pumpkin farmer subsidies or, better yet, perhaps finding a way to use the surplus pumpkins to produce an alternative biofuel so that when we are following a car running on pumpkinhol, it smells like we are following a two-door, four-cylinder pumpkin pie. This wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Sure, tough economic times are ahead, but we are Americans. We won’t be down for long. If we can make a thriving industry out of an oversized squash, then we can remake a newer, stronger economy for the 21st century out of pretty much anything.

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