An Odd Combination

I love seeing leaves turn bright colors and magazines promote colorful pages full of Halloween costumes, décor, and party ideas. Shopping aisles full of colorful candy tempt my eye. Making this season even better, garden centers display net sacks filled with next spring’s tulips and daffodils. An Orscheln’s exhibit showcased 30 bulb packages, so after stocking up on October 31 goodies, I tossed one each of daffodils and tulips into my cart. I’ll tuck them into a fall garden bed and watch them bloom come May.

I’ve always loved growing vegetables and flowers. It wasn’t until I married that I planted rows of blossoms that start from a bulb. The first year was disappointing but those following provided multiplying reasons to love these perennials. As time passes, those bulbs double, quadruple, well—you get the picture. With patience, a skimpy beginning evolves into a blast of brilliant color waving in spring breezes. This motivates me to plant season after season.

Because marketers promote both Halloween candy and flower bulbs that must be planted before mid-November, the association tempts me to hand out flower bulbs to trick or treaters along with instructions to start their flower bed. Before long, good sense reigns and I instead stock up on sweets for costumed guests. However, I should mention that four-legged trick or treaters of the squirrel and deer variety do a happy dance when I throw a sack or two of bulbs into my cart.

Yes, these furry neighbors look forward to this time of year too. I swear squirrels hiding in trees a block away have spotting scopes they use to spy on where I tuck those tender orbs. Within a day or two, I find a couple of fresh plantings dug out and devoured. Once nothing remained but loose dirt—the bulbs vanished like the ghosties who wandered up our sidewalk with bags in hand.

Deer do their damage later when tender leaves and delicate blossoms first emerge. While squirrels don’t discriminate between daffodil and tulip, mature deer have a more selective palate. I suspect yearlings don’t know daffodils disagree with their stomachs and sample a few until they learn better. Older ones leave turn their noses up. Tulips are another matter. Based on the number these gluttons eat, white tails and muleys consider them delicacies.

When we lived by Big Creek, I counted myself lucky if half my tulips made it to full bloom. I rarely worried about protecting them from the fingers of curious toddlers because deer beat our daughters to them every spring. Odds for a successful full flowering haven’t improved much even though I now live in town and our girls are grown. Apparently, hooved gourmands can’t resist wandering through swing set-filled neighborhoods. They’ve discovered residents landscape with tasty treats that turn their junket into a candy store visit.

Over time, my brain has melded Halloween and spring bulb planting into a combined experience. Be careful when you check your trick or treat bag.  I may cave and pass out next season’s blooms instead of the traditional Hershey bar or Kit Kat.

A Belated Sort of Ghost Story

Compared with the thin-veiled night of October 31, the more flamboyant July 4^th doesn’t seem much like a time to expect a haunting. That may be true in normal circumstances, but when you live in Ellis County where you’ve heard stories about the Blue Light Lady roaming rolling hills southwest of Hays, one day is as good as another to encounter disembodied spirits. Our grown daughters still recall the scare of their lives on rise overlooking old Fort Hays.

The little girls’ holiday began with bags of poppers and sulfurous snakes that stained our sidewalk black for months afterwards. After they shrieked at those exploding, powder-filled tissues and lit licorice nib-size buttons that wound into stinky coils, we cooled off at the swimming pool. Later, we cranked ice cream, fried chicken, and baked chocolate cake while my husband patrolled Cedar Bluff. He promised to get home in time to watch Hays’ firework show.

Early July means the sun doesn’t set until after nine, so our sunburned blondes were tired by the time their father came home. Hearing the door open, they wrapped themselves around his legs, hollering, “Fireworks!” He stalled them long enough to grab cold chicken and cake before piling in the car.

Instead of following the highway, my hubs told us he’d drive the back way, south of Ellis. Eventually, he took a dusty country road that eventually overlooked the festivities below our lonely hilltop. A game warden, he’d driven these county roads and knew exactly where we’d have the best view. As neared our destination, a niggling memory inched from the recesses of my mind. I recollected students writing essays about spotting the legendary Blue Light Lady near our targeted parking spot.

Those teenage stories often included realistic encounters with a wandering spirit. Despite suspecting that many such sightings were designed to trigger scared girls to leap into brave boys’ arms, I didn’t want to meet this ghost.

My husband dismissed my concerns with a big grin, and big ears in the back seat begged to watch the show from Blue Light Lady Hill. Apparently, all my loved ones were game to meet a disembodied spirit. I, on the other hand, had encountered a ghost or two and wasn’t eager to hang out with ectoplasm.

We put the car in park just after dusk and lowered windows to catch evening breezes. Immediately, mosquitoes telegraphed every nearby bloodsucking insect, alerting them that dinner had arrived. While smacking buzzing torpedoes, we talked about the nurse who cared for cholera patients at the fort and succumbed to the disease herself. According to the story, she convinced her husband to bury her near the hill where she wandered the prairie every day. All of us were sad to think about her short life, but the irritating drone of invading bugs and the first flashes of early fireworks preoccupied us.

As darkness deepened and exploding diamonds punctuated black skies, my daughters and I stared transfixed at the magic of gunpowder combined with colorful chemicals. Perfectly timing his treachery, our driver cried, “What’s that?”

Our eyes flashed to his corner. Horrified, we spied a monstrous hand covering the windshield. We shrieked like actresses in monster movies. The instigator laughed hysterically. He’d pulled a good one on his gullible girls.

He laid the groundwork by taking us to Blue Light Lady Elizabeth Polly’s old haunt. Then he encouraged our ghost story recollections. In the dark with showers of descending sparkles to distract us, the rascal slipped his long arm out the open window, wrapped it over the glass before him, and scared the peewadlins out of his daughters, wife, and a horde of mosquitoes.

I’m guessing Elizabeth Polly’s ghost laughed heartily at our expense that night. If we’d have quit screaming, we’d have heard her chuckles accompanying sounds of exploding fireworks and droning insects.

Passing the Candy Bag to the Next Generation

Our daughter sent us a picture of our granddaughter dressed up as a pretty princess for her first trick or treat outing. Our kids waited until their daughter was almost four to let her join the ranks of smiling goblins knocking on doors in search of goodies on Halloween night, and it’s clear this cutie pie enjoyed her adventure. Her smile radiating above her flowing white dress switched on a deluge of happy memories from my brother’s and my years as beggars who also loved this holiday.

As a fan of “The Rifleman,” “Gun Smoke,” and “Combat,” my brother often costumed himself as either a cowboy or a soldier. He had the necessary plastic rifles and pistols along with hats, vests, and bandanas in his toy box. If he was tired of the old West, he had an equally fine collection of imitation WW II armament that he and dad used to aid actors on the TV show “Combat” during their firefights. At every commercial break, father and son chased Nazis down our hallway and out of closets. For Halloween, Kent could smudge his face with black and be ready to defend the neighborhood outside our front door as well.

During regular playtime in our yard, the tomboy side of me joined the boys in their shoot ‘em up western and army games. However, for Halloween, I didn’t want to be Festus to my little brother’s Matt Dillon. Some years I wanted to be a pretty spook so mom would let me sort through her flowing skirts, rope necklaces, bangle bracelets, and glittery earrings until I’d assembled a costume that would make a Roma princess green with envy. This was one of the few times she’d let me wear her eye shadow, lipstick, and rouge, which might explain why I often chose this costume.

As much as I loved to glide down a dark sidewalk in full gypsy array with my mother’s necklaces and bracelets clinking rhythmically against one another at each step, some years I dressed up as a sad- faced hobo. In the early 60s, folks still talked about men who’d ridden the rails during The Great Depression. Apparently, I found this notion romantic. I’d slide into mom’s too big britches, tie a piece of rope around my waist to hold her pants up, and wear one of dad’s huge shirts with tails that nearly reached the sidewalk. Some years, mom would draw a dark beard on my face with her eyebrow brush and once, she applied coffee grounds to my cheeks so it looked like I had scruffy whiskers. Top that with one of dad’s old felt hats, and a pig-tailed blonde became Freddie the Freeloader.

Halloween was a heady day for two youngsters who rarely roamed the neighborhood freely. We’d lug our brown paper sacks from one lighted doorway to another, knocking and chanting the requisite Trick or Treat. If we were lucky, a local mom handed out homemade popcorn balls. If we were unlucky, the grocery store had a sale on saltwater taffy just before the big night and the neighbors stocked up on my least favorite candy.

Times have changed considerably since my brother and I were trick or treaters. Despite the passage of time, the look on our granddaughter’s face in her first Halloween photo tells me that she has discovered how much fun it is to be a goblin one night a year.