Jack Frost foiled: Pumpkin patch rescued with help from friends

Despite the killing frost, kids get their pumpkins.

The entire pumpkin patch was dead, down to the last pumpkin. Gerald Wise of LaCrosse woke up the morning after a killer early October frost and surveyed the damage to his beloved patch. Some pumpkins were so mushy, you could poke a finder through the skin.

What would he do? Citizens of LaCrosse and their Halloween-happy children have relied on Wise’s pumpkin patch on Halloween for the past 15 years. Not once had his patch suffered a frost that rivaled the seven-degree nights Oct. 8 and 9 that wiped out his entire crop.

But someone was looking...