Pumpkin record? Boston wants to smash it

It will take 900 volunteers wielding plastic spoons and serrated knives, riding golf carts to speed around, and brandishing barbecue lighters for the final moment of truth.

It will require the services of an accounting firm to certify the results. And it will require the help of hundreds of Bostonians, who have tried and failed for the last two years to make their mark in history, to break the world record for the most pumpkins lit in one place at one time.

The record of 28,952 glowing jack-o'-lanterns has been held since 2003 by the city's bucolic neighbor to the north, Keene, N.H.

Today , Boston will try to smash that record by lighting 30,000 pumpkins at 5:45 p.m. on the Boston Common. If organizers succeed, the city's historic green will be transformed into a sea of glowing orange gourds, and bragging rights will be Boston's.

But Keene, scrappy champion and self-professed underdog, will be trying to hold onto its record today by lighting 30,000 pumpkins along its Main Street.

No one knows until the last gourd is lit which city will tally the most jack-o'-lanterns, but both cities are cautiously predicting a victory, saying they have put in the long, hard hours of planning and mustered the necessary armies of volunteers.

"We feel pretty confident that if we can get a little bit of help from the public, we can get there," said Jim Laughlin, a spokesman for Life is Good, the Boston-based clothing company that is sponsoring the city's pumpkin festival. "We've got a great shot to get 30,000 this year."

Boston's festival reached 16,000 two years ago and more than 24,500 last year. Organizers said they chose the goal of 30,000 as a way to rally volunteers.

Suzanne Woodward -- an event coordinator for Center Stage Cheshire County, an event-planning company in Keene that is organizing that city's bid -- stressed that small-town pride is on the line. Keene has about 23,000 residents, a fraction of Boston's population of about 560,000, she said.

"It's more of a challenge for us to try get to 30,000 than it would be for Boston, but we've got great spirit here, so I think we've got a shot at it," Woodward said in a telephone interview yesterday as she unloaded pumpkins in the rain.

About 20 other cities across the country also will take a run at the record this fall, including the first try by Bennington, Vt., next weekend.

To break the record, Boston's pumpkin festival must be run with military precision, Laughlin said. Enough pumpkins must be procured and trucked into the center of the city. Enough volunteers must show up to carve the pumpkins, place the votive candles inside, and light the last one before any go out. And every one of them must be counted and recorded.

Life is Good has ordered 20,000 pumpkins from Walter Gladstone, a farmer in Fairlee, Vt., and several thousand more from farms in Concord, Northborough, and Needham.

US Senator Edward M. Kennedy and US Representative Martin T. Meehan carved some Thursday with students at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, which churned out 1,200 jack-o'-lanterns over several hours. Students at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., added 1,200, and UPS workers showed their muscle, scooping and carving 2,500. Theirs arrived yesterday in bins of 70, stacked in the back of a brown delivery truck.

Laughlin said 10,000 pumpkins will be carved today on the Common, and the public is invited to bring their own and join in. Volunteers will be assigned to tables: one for chopping the tops off the pumpkins, one for scooping the innards, and one for carving the faces.

Once outfitted with a votive candle, each pumpkin will be numbered with an indelible black marker, and the tally recorded in a logbook.

Thirty-five accountants from Braver PC, a Newton-based auditing firm, will watch the process. The accountants held their own carving party in the office yesterday, and said they are trying to remain impartial.

"I can't root for them -- I want to, but we need to be objective so we can be the auditors," said Alison Simons, a Braver spokeswoman.

By yesterday afternoon, some 6,700 pumpkins had arrived on the Common, stacked in batches of 70 on wooden pallets. Workers had erected a 40-foot scaffold to display about 2,000 of them. Today, more will be displayed on waist-high racks across the Common and lined along the pathways.

It will take 500 volunteers about 90 minutes to light them all, Laughlin said.

The festival -- which includes music, face-painting, and a costume parade for children -- is free.

But proceeds from the sale of Life is Good T-shirts and money collected in boxes in the Common will be donated to Camp Sunshine in Casco, Maine, which provides retreats for children with life-threatening illnesses.

Organizers hope to raise $250,000.

Once the jack-o'-lanterns are extinguished, they will return to the earth, made into fertilizer for local farms.

Laughlin said he wanted the festival to have the feel of a "good old country fair in the heart of the city," but he emphasized that breaking the record is hard work.

"It does take a tremendous amount of planning," Laughlin said. "It's a labor-intensive process to handle all these pumpkins."

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.