PUMPKIN or apple?

That appears to be the question vexing New Hampshire right now and it doesn't mean which one you want for dessert. At least, not exactly.

New Hampshire has managed, if you can imagine it, to have made it this far without having an official state fruit. Some fourth graders over in Harrisville want to change that. They are pushing for the pumpkin.

We have our own opinion, of course; but first let's look at that "official state" thing. We now have a state bird, a state bug, a state amphibian, a state rock, a state mineral, a state animal, a state gem, a state amphibian, a state wildflower, a state butterfly, a state saltwater game fish, a state freshwater game fish, a state tartan, a state sport, a state motto, a state flower, several state songs, and a state flag.

We had the Old Man of the Mountain, too; although he may not have been our official state symbol and, anyway, everyone knows what happened to him.

We are not at all sure that New Hampshire really needs to have a state fruit, although now that these school children have gone and made it public that we are without one, some people will feel naked and ashamed until we get one. And don't you know that people from other states will make fun of us. Silly, fruitless New Hampshire!

Thanks a lot, Wells Memorial Elementary school kids!

But pumpkins?

"They're just big and orange and after Halloween they rot," Chuck Souther, owner of Apple Hill Farm in Concord, told the school children when their bill was introduced last week.

But the kids like the pumpkin. They note the fame of the Keene pumpkin festival, for one thing. Besides, said school boy Johnny Silk, the apple is already the state fruit in Vermont.

Who the heck wants to copy Vermont?

Good point, that. But the kids had to cite Carl Sandburg when looking for a pumpkin poem. Robert Frost, who ought to be enshrined as official New Hampshire state poet if he hasn't been already, didn't write about the pumpkin that we recall.

Frost did write about blueberries, of course. But Maine has beaten us to the punch on wild blueberries; and New Jersey — of all places — has claimed the high bush blueberry.

So far, no one has the pumpkin (considered a fruit because it grows from the pollinated blossom of a flower). We say let's grab it and get on to the next big issue, whatever it is.