THE INCREDIBLE, INEDIBLE GOURD

by Mariane Holbrook

The first time I saw the bumper sticker, “I Don’t Do Crafts,” I laughed out loud.

Because I DO do crafts!

I’ve done them all: from making string pot holders on a metal frame in grade school to making the ugliest ceramic Egyptian urns since God rained down ugly ceramic Egyptian urns on a stubborn Pharaoh; I’ve done them all.

But the craft that nearly cost me my marriage was when I decided to grow and paint gourds.

Stop laughing! Gourds have an intriguing history but it’s so boring even I won’t even go there.

Suffice it to say that gourds for centuries have been used for rattles, drums, stringed instruments, masks, water bottles, ladles, dippers, funnels, and birdhouses. Well, you can’t say that about string pot holders!

Having tried every craft that came down the pike and crowning Carol Duvall my personal patron saint, it
was inevitable that sooner or later I would stumble onto gourds. 

Driving down the highway one Saturday, I saw a welcome sign for the “Apex Gourd Museum.” I slammed on 
my brakes, backed up and entered the most interesting gourd museum I’d ever visited and likely the only gourd museum in the world. Right up there with Eggplant Museums.

I was hooked before I even got inside. Gourds from every part of the world were stacked, hung, piled. boxed and displayed in this strange museum.

I went home and corned my long-suffering husband, John.

“Honey, I have an idea for the biggest money-making adventure I’ve ever attempted, “ I raved.

John rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Well, even if you make a whole dollar on this one, you’d be way ahead of all your other money-makers.” John isn’t exactly Diplomatic Corps material.

Before he could rattle off a list of my “money-making horror stories,” I hurried to my computer and Googled my way through pages and pages of gourd articles. I wanted to be an expert. I wanted to make money. I wanted to be named “Gourd Woman of the Year!”

I won’t go into the bribes or methods of persuasion I used on John. It wouldn’t be fittin.’ 

But soon I had him driving all over eastern North Carolina looking for gourds. To make a short, embarrassing 
story even shorter, I ended up buying over 200 large basketball-size gourds on which I painted everything from
cartoon characters to still life to landscapes. I gave one to all my friends who displayed them only when they saw
my car pull up in their driveways.

So great was my passion for these ugly-turned-uglier things that I persuaded Reminisce magazine to print a story about them, with a photo of these monstrosities on a table before me. That was a few years ago. John’s aunt stopped speaking to me, so embarrassed was she by my thoughtless exploitation of a good family name.

One memorable day that I’d love to forget, I talked John into purchasing a $1500 tent, $200 folding tables and chairs and a $450 entrance fee to a weekend craft fair in a neighboring city. Are you ready for this? Of the nearly 100,000 people who sashayed past my craft booth, I managed to sell one, that’s O.N.E. large painted gourd. It was to a friend and I sold it to her for half price.

John was delighted. Crestfallen though I was, I had to make this gourd idea work. So, back to the proverbial drawing board I hurried.

“Aha,” I said to myself (since nobody else would listen), “I’ve been painting the wrong size gourd!”

“John,” I purred in my best needy little kitten voice, “Will you help me plant a few gourd seeds?”

“NO!” he thundered. “Have you seen the bill for the breezeway that the carpenters made into a craft room for your gourds? Don’t even ask me to LOOK at a gourd seed let alone PLANT one.”

Like all good husbands, John can be sweet-talked into almost anything. He ended up planting a half-acre of mini gourd seeds that produced several thousand healthy mini gourds. We spread them out on an unused back porch to dry in the semi-sun for several months, after which John scrubbed and bleached each one and I began painting Santa faces.

I mailed one to Cracker-Barrel Restaurant and Gift Shop headquarters in Tennessee and immediately received an order for 3,500 Santa Christmas gourd ornaments. I painted day and night for almost three months! After a complicated system of wrapping and packaging to their specifications, I shipped them all off to Cracker Barrel and fell into a well-deserved heap of exhaustion.

The gourd ornaments were sold out by October 1st. Cracker Barrel sent me an S.O.S. order for 5,000 more which I couldn’t possibly paint in time for Christmas. Besides, I was sick to death of gourds. I never painted another one.

Driving to South Carolina last month, I saw a sign: MAKE MONEY WEAVING SEA-GRASS BASKETS.

Hmmmmmm…….