Even Dinosaurs Love a Parade

 

It’s not every night you can watch a Halloween parade while standing next to a dinosaur.  Possibly only in my hometown can it happen. 

I believe it was about thirteen years ago that the Halloween parade tradition started in my little town.  We may not have everything here, but we have some dedicated Halloween enthusiasts.  For many years before the parade, West End Avenue was known as the “official” Halloween street.  Hundreds of costumed folks, young and old, patrolled the street near the town square every October 31^st, partly to collect candy but mostly to view the decorations and visit one house in particular.  At the foot of a steep hill just off the square, the McFarlin family created a haunted yard, a spooky wonderland.  Other homeowners made vain attempts to match their extravaganza, but it was impossible to measure up.  The huge crowds led to more events on the square – pumpkin carving, a costume contest, popcorn, candy giveaways by stores around the square and a good old time for all.  Even the local funeral home got into the act, creating a haunted encounter sure to scare those brave enough to enter.

As things happen, the Halloween family sold their house and moved across town.  But there were all those decorations.  So why not start a Halloween parade? It made perfect sense to the folks in Centerville.  Everybody loves a parade.

The Halloween parade takes place on the Saturday night before Halloween night.  As it happens every few years, sometimes that means back-to-back nights of festivities.  This year is such a year.  Last night, throngs of excited children (and adults) lined the streets along the route and watched friends and neighbors drive trucks, cars, jeeps, fire trucks, and gators along the streets, throwing enough candy to send everyone in town into a diabetic coma.  Spooky jails, pirate ships, cemeteries, and decorated hearses passed by us. 

 

A pirate ship sailed down the street!

The Ghostbusters were out and about, as well as the Jurassic Park vehicles.  The Flintstones even made an appearance in their stone age car, with shouts of “Yabba, Dabba, Do” along the parade route.  As I looked around, I thought about a Norman Rockwell painting, and of a time of innocence and wonder, when monsters only seemed to appear once a year and children knew deep inside that they were only ordinary people dressed up in costume.

 

 

Hayrides are still a thing in this rural area.  I haven’t been on one is decades, but I remember the thrill well.  My daddy would hitch the hay wagon to the tractor, throw some bales of straw on the back, and away we would go.  It was a favorite pastime of courting couples, always looking for an excuse to cuddle in the cold air and sneak a few kisses in the moonlight.  I expect that many a girl got her first kiss sitting on a bale of straw wrapped with her boyfriend in an old quilt.  We would return home after an hour or so to a bonfire with hot dogs and marshmallows to roast.  In later years, my daddy drove many a hayride for our local church group.  Some of them still talk about those times.  I always meant to dress up as the headless horseman and ride my horse across the field during these excursions, but somehow never got the courage to do it.  It’s probably a good thing.  My horse didn’t always share my enthusiasm for things I thought would be fun, and I would probably have ended up being the headless horseman walking home without his horse.

One year we built a haunted house.  A bunch of friends got together and decorated an old, empty house and charged people a couple of dollars to brave the mummies, ghosts, and witches we created.  We were so successful the first night, our customers kept turning around and running back out the door.  We solved that problem by sending one of our mummies to follow along behind the crowds and scare them back on the correct route.  It was a roaring success.

Another generation of citizens has come along to continue the Halloween tradition.  Another street has taken over the designation of Halloween street in Centerville and neighbors compete to see who can come up with the biggest, most outlandish display to entice youngsters to their door.  Tonight was a perfect night.  Cold enough to encourage shivers, partly from the weather and partly from nerves.  Tiny cowboys, dinosaurs, baby sharks, princesses, clowns, puppies, cows, and every other character imaginable trooped up and down the streets and around the square, shouting the same entreaty children have shouted for over one hundred years in this town.  “Trick or treat!”

 

Danger in the Morning

 

Sophie thinks she saved me from a frightful injury the other morning.  She had already spent quite a bit of time staring out the bedroom window and barking before I finally got up to let her outside.  It was just daylight, with a thick fog that hid everything more than 100 feet away.  Whatever she saw, or sensed, was hidden to me.  She rushed to the edge of the porch and continued barking hysterically, the bark she reserves for “There’s something out there and it’s dangerous.”  I figured it was a dawdling nocturnal visitor in the garden, searching for leftover goodies, or an early rising rabbit or squirrel.  I went back to bed to read for a few minutes before beginning my Monday.

After ten or fifteen minutes of non-stop barking, I decided to investigate the imminent threat myself.  Sophie was not going to let whatever this was go.  So, on with my robe and shoes, and I braved the early morning danger.  I couldn’t see any creatures, but I did see an unfamiliar colorful object lying next to the fence near my bedroom window.  I took it to be a plastic bag.  Now, Sophie enjoys playing with plastic bags if she can steal one, so the sight of one lying on the ground was not all that unusual, but that was the area where she was laser focused.  I thought there must be some creature hidden in the bushes by the fence and walked to the edge of the porch to look closer.  Sophie placed herself in front of me and sat down.  That is her response to anything she feels might be a danger to her human mom.  Obviously, there was a serious threat to my safety out there and she was going to place herself between me and it, whatever it was.  She continued to bark.  Bear, who was not participating in the frenzy, came over to see what was going on.  He gave Sophie a look like “What?”  She gave him a contemptuous glare right back, obviously feeling that he was not doing his part in protecting mom from certain death.

I finally got past my guardian and walked over for a closer look at the intruder.  It was a deflated mylar balloon, an escapee from a birthday party, which obviously had evil designs on everyone in the area.  Who knows what it might have done to us had Sophie not been on the job?  If it had made its way into the house, it could have wrapped itself around my face and smothered me in my sleep.  Taking my life in my hands, I picked it up.  Sophie sniffed it thoroughly and that seemed to be the end of that. 

It’s a day or two later and now the story gets a little stranger.  This morning I noticed some disturbance in the ground near where the balloon landed.  On closer inspection, I find that Bear, Sophie’s cohort, has dug a hole big enough to hide a body in.  We are talking about a HOLE.  He must have worked half the night on it.  And he’s busy digging another one just a few feet away.  What does he know that I don’t know?  Is it a storm shelter?  Or does he plan on killing someone and needs a place to hide the body?  Or does he think I need a root cellar in which to store our valuables? Maybe the balloon was part of space alien reconnaissance before the invasion.  Sophie has thoroughly inspected his work and seems pleased.  What do they know that I don’t know?  It’s making me a little uneasy.

 

 

 

The Bittersweet Season

 

It has been a mistake, maybe, to spend a fall Saturday listening to old favorite songs.  Autumn seems to invite melancholy, whether deserved or not.  Even the happy songs had a sad edge today.  And I ran across Rachel Field's "Something Told the Wild Geese" this morning.  Why does that poem always make me sad?  The last lines make me shiver. 

    Something told the wild geese it was time to fly ...

    Summer sun was on their wings, winter in their cry.

If seasons have personalities, autumn is bi-polar.  Bright colors from maples dressed for a final party contrast with the forlorn garden, spent from the bright promise of spring and relegated to sad corn stalks and a few dried pods of forgotten peas overlooked by tired gardeners.  It’s the time to reflect on success and failures of the growing season – next year I’m going to resist so many pepper plants and I’m never planting that variety of beans again.  More peas and less squash and forget that new variety of tomato.  The old reliables are better. 

 Walnuts fall with loud thuds, making it dangerous to walk in the backyard.  If you are not hit in the head by a falling missile, you might accidentally find yourself roller skating on them after they land.  This is an especially good year for the tree in my backyard.  Every day, I gather a bucket or two of nuts to dump in the lane going to the barn, our time worn method of hulling walnuts.  In past years, there was so much traffic going in and out of the barn lot that the job was quickly finished, but now traffic is sparse, and I have to run back and forth with the Kubota to hull the walnuts.  I still pour them out on top of the old cistern where hundreds of thousands of nuts have been pounded with rocks to get at the meats.  Every time I do it, I understand why black walnuts are so expensive at the stores!  We used to have more trees, and we used to pick up and sell several hundred pounds of walnuts every year at the local co-op, where they hulled them with a big machine and paid us per pound for the nuts left behind.  Extra money was always nice for the holidays.

Fields of stubble are all that is left of bright rows of corn, the golden harvest on its way to giant grain bins.  In a good year, acres of grain mean a good year for the farmer, a harvest that fulfills the promise of the spring.  For farmers around here, an unseasonal rise in the river means a slim crop this year, at least from the fickle bottom land.  Mother nature, as an apology for the flood, has tried to compensate with a bumper hay crop, thanks to a wet spring and summer.  

 

The crisp air is a welcome relief from the oppressive heat of summer, but the breeze through the drying leaves whispers of a frost to come.  Sitting on the porch after dark requires long sleeves and reminds me that it’s time to think about packing away shorts and sleeveless shirts and bringing out sweaters and sweatpants and flannel sheets.  Wasn’t it just last week that I put all that away?

Mornings are quieter now; the fog muffles the sounds.  The birds have lost their enthusiasm for the dawn and the hummingbirds have heard rumors of winter and left for warmer places. The shorter days urge the wild geese to hurry south.  Is there a sound that tugs at your heart more than their plaintive cry?  Marigolds stubbornly open their bright faces to the sun, but the four-o’clocks have pretty much given up. A few brave roses hang on, reminding us that spring will come again.  

 

Bittersweet memories flood the brain, thoughts of the bright beginning of the school year and the excitement of football, marching bands and bonfires.  Halloween fun and the mysterious journey around the neighborhood where every shadow might be a ghost or vampire, but surely is only another imposter, ready to shout “trick or treat” in anticipation of candy.  My small town is a Halloween expert – with a parade and plenty of neighborhoods where neighbors compete to see who can decorate best and serve the most treats for small spooks.  My memories of trick or treat are mixed at best.  In the days of those plastic masks that were all that was available, a little nearsighted girl who wore glasses had the choice of leaving off the glasses or the mask.  For some reason, it never occurred to me to dress up as something that didn’t require a mask, so I was left to stumble through the neighborhood, dependent on friends to warn me of unseen obstacles.  Suffice it to say, I spent a lot of time falling in ditches and stumbling over yard decorations.  But the memories are still bright points of my childhood, just as nights huddled under a quilt at the football stadium recall my teen years.  How do you tell young people to hold on tight to those memories – memories to keep them warm in their autumn and winter years?  I’m glad I have mine, even if they sometimes do lead to a melancholy Saturday aftersoon.