From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Oct. 19, 1971:

Paul Morse, one of the owners of the 1,600-acre Riverview Farms in DeSoto, spoke to the Journal-World about the labor involved in raising pumpkins for market. The human touch was a necessity, he said, adding, “There is a machine that picks pumpkins, but it pulls them off the stems, and nobody wants a pumpkin without a piece of the steam attached.” For prospective jack-o-lanterns, he said, most people liked a good color and round shape as well as a stem, but that some people like unusual shapes. “We throw a few odd-looking ones into the bunch,” he said. Riverview Farms had shipped 20,000 pumpkins to the Safeway supermarket chain in Kansas City, another 20,000 to the Milgram’s chain, and other truckloads to Dallas and San Antonio, Tex., and Little Rock, Ark.