Day of Jack 'o Lanterns

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Puck’s first Halloween. The morning began with early rosy blue skies, baby breezes in the crunchy yellow leaves, and fat squirrels running the telephone poles from end to end.

Rose had spent the evening before trying to forget the woes of her sore throat by treating herself out to a Halloween costume hunt. She was successful. Then she stayed up late carving a nose-less pumpkin.

It was another Halloween where the layers of color melted from brown and green to yellow and gold, orange and red, to deep red. White fields, misted woods, autumn gray skies. Except this year, there was no rain or threatening rain.

Back on the ranch, Frances was still at his math studies at the counter while Mom and Linnea took Puck on a Halloween walk through the neighborhood.

“Do you ever get spam?” Frances asked Collette while in the middle of working a problem.

“Yes, but I delete it.”

“No, I mean the real Spam.”

“Oh, no. Maybe I ate it once, but I don’t remember. Why?”

“They have it on Scout camp outs and it’s terrible. Everyone was getting mad at the cooks for cooking garbage. They were throwing it in the fire.”

Then Rose flew into the kitchen in her costume garb: black robe and red skeleton mask.

“Do I look scary?”

She did. Off came the mask and the usual fountain of hair popped out on the top of her head.

“Remember when we put Snuggles in the microwave?” Frances asked her.

“Yes, and I pulled him out just in time. That’s probably why he has a bent tail.”

“We’re back,” Linnea called from the front door. “Eew! A spider!”

Smash!

“He was trying to get in, so I killed him.”

“That was very hospitable of you,” Collette told her, as she opened the screen door.

“Oh no!” Rose yelled from the kitchen. “Take your bacon, quick!”

She slammed two pieces of her full plate of bacon on the counter for Collette, and dashed out of the room.

“I’m not supposed to have any bacon!” She called behind her, just as Mom came through the door.

“Who had bacon?” Mom asked.

The telltale signs were evident: greasy paper towels, a small glass candle of Rose’s special bacon grease/salt candle concoction complete with wick, and the permeating aroma of bacon grease.

“Does a battery work if you plug it into an orange?” Frances was clearly distracted from adding “like terms” in his notebook.

Meanwhile, jack ‘o lanterns glowed from all over the living room. One special jack ‘o lantern included a small pumpkin with blinking lights written out as “PUCK”. He liked this, and would have eaten it if given permission.

During the afternoon, Rose retired to her room to watch a documentary on North Korea, then looked up North Korea’s prison camps on Google Earth. After berating the country for its terrible use of propaganda, she turned her attention to her jack ‘o lantern.

“I have a scientific pumpkin,” she said. “I’m drying it out with salt.”

“That doesn’t make it scientific,” said Frances, who was still busy with his math at the counter.

“It’s more scientific than shoving a bullet up your nose,” Rose retorted, as she walked out onto the patio to check out her pepper plant.

She was referring to Frances’ jack ‘o lantern whose nose was carved in the shape of a bullet.

“Holy cow!” She cried, coming back inside. “That pepper is hot!”

She held out two little green peppers in her hand. After making Frances take a lick of one and getting some of the juice in her eye, she cried out the spice over the sink, then set to cutting up one of the peppers and putting it in the stew in the crockpot.

“Let’s see if they notice,” she said.

Joe soon returned from class with plans to go out trick or treating dressed up as “Facebook”. But in the end, he went as himself and accompanied Mom, Frances, and Linnea to the Hobcoggin’s. Dad was at Lindenwood at class till ten. (Perhaps he would see the rising of the infamous Mary ghost at her tombstone.) Rose trick or treated with Juliet at home and returned to watch “The House on Haunted Hill”. OLeif, Collette, and Puck took a walk around the neighborhood and Collette was able to snatch a few Reeses peanut butter cups from the bowl before OLeif handed out the rest to the neighborhood kids.

Another successful Halloween.