Rotting Pumpkins, Hurley, New York
That’s what it sounded like, just outside Hurley, New York, where thousands of beached pumpkins rot on the ground. The farmer was clearly still mad about the whole thing as he let off with his shotgun in our direction, unaware that I just wanted to photograph the corpses. This a consequence of last month’s storm which lashed the area, and flooded these fields with several feet of water as the Esopus Creek overflowed its banks with runoff from the Catskills. The last time something like this happened to us was in the Seventies as I photographed a vineyard in Austria, right on the Hungarian border, when the bored occupants of a Communist guard tower let off a few rounds close over my head. I should learn to avoid vegetables and fruit in the vicinity of armed malcontents.