AN INVITATION TO DELINQUENCY
We weren't really so bad, my brothers and me.
Once we were too old for Trick or Treating
we reveled in the freedom of the night to
be junior hooligans-of a mild sort.
My mother ordained a simple act of "terrorizing."
She told us that when she was young, they would
toss dried corn kernels at windows. We did
a lot of that. There was also this thing with a
wooden sewing thread spool, notched and
put against and window and then spun with fishing line.
When it worked, it made a clatter. But it seldom worked and you had stomp on flower beds to get near windows.
The corn kernels were easier and gave us more safety
of distance.
My brother John and I saved a stunt for a couple of
folks we didn't like. They wouldn't pay their newspaper bill-we were carriers-or we'd had a run in of some sort-football
in their yard, bike parked on their sidewalk-that sort of thing. For them we did the big deal.
Dog poop in a paper sack, set afire on the front step.
Set it there, light it, ring the door bell and run for the
bushes. Oh what a delight to watch the "jerks" stomp it out
and then swear any manner of oaths.
Oh there was a year when I must have been having
an identity issue. Too old for trick or treating, but
I loved dressing up like Zorro. So I waited in bushes
near a mail box, and as people approached-we actually used
mail boxes back then-I'd jump out, make the sign of
Zorro-the big Z-with my plastic swoard and then
hand them a cluster of grapes. Yes truly-I gave them grapes.
As I think back on it now, it wasn't so much fright,
shock or surprise that I got in return. I think it was
a look in the eyes that said "what the hell kind of
nut job is this kid?" I think it was the next
year that my brother and I moved up to
paper sack arson.
SPEAKING OF GOOFY COSTUMES
In response to a previous post about pampas grass,
Bruce, aka, Catalyst, sent a picture of the day
we flew from his Phoenix home back to the mid-west with our California pampas grass in hand. Bruce is the handsome swashbuckler on the left with his beautiful lady SWMBO at his side. Lana is the lovely young cowgirl with the pampas grass.
Notice how there is a lot of unexplained plaid in the
picture. Oh, the geeky smirker with the jr.Solzhenitsyn beard? Don't know who that is. Looks like he could be
one of those latent Zorros.
But what is it about that plaid?
See you down the trail.
