Halloween – Life In A Word

A Bowl of Snowflakes

Part of the appeal of Halloween – at least for us baby boomers – is the thought of innocent days (and nights) from our distant past. Not only were we kids back then, we cavorted in full costumes through our neighborhoods without a parent in sight. Every house left a light on or a door open to welcome trick-or-treating. Every street seemed safe and inviting. And the treats were often as homemade as they were store-bought. Cookies. Lollipops. The odd neighbor doling out little sausages hot off the grill from his front yard (BBQ sauce optional). And the occasional popcorn ball.

Who doesn’t love a good popcorn ball? Me. I don’t. Popcorn balls may be a nostalgic Halloween memory but they’re also an insult to popcorn. Whoever invented them turned a savory snack into a sickly sweet one. We’re not talking caramel-, chocolate-, or even kettle-corn sweet here; just liquid sugar designed to act as glue to make popcorn a convenient handheld. Awful.

I admit it, I’ve become a popcorn snob the way some people are about coffee. There’s a way to enjoy popcorn and there’s a dozen ways not to. It’s a snack that deserves to get it right, because getting it wrong is anything but a “treat” (like popcorn balls).

Popcorn eased its way into our after-dinner desserts by necessity. One day (night) my wife and I sat there after the evening meal and realized we were having dessert way too often. It was always ice cream, cookies, or whatever else we could find in the pantry. Somehow a savory dinner necessitated a sweet dessert. Bad habit – very bad. Instead, make the dinner healthy enough, eat it early enough, and keep yourself off the couch watching TV. Then dessert rarely enters the conversation. Yeah, uh, we’re still working on that. The dinners are healthy, but we can never get them on the table – er, couch – before 7pm.

Popcorn to the rescue. It’s a dessert that doesn’t feel like a dessert. It’s not sweet, and with an air popper it’s all of three ingredients. Popped corn, topped with butter and salt. Make those first two “organic” and the last one “Celtic sea”, and it sounds like something that’s actually good for you.

Popcorn belongs in a bowl, not in a ball. We take the largest bowl in our kitchen, fill it almost full with popped corn, and call it dessert. Oh, right, but that’s just for me. Then we take the second-largest bowl in our kitchen and pop a similar serving for my wife.

Since I always aim to educate a little, here’s popcorn trivia worth remembering. One, the corn used for popping is not the same as the kernels on the cob (so don’t get any ideas). Two, when the kernels burst – literally inside out – you get one of two shapes; snowflakes or mushrooms. Snowflakes are what we have at night for dessert, and what you find severely overpriced in movie theaters. Mushrooms are what you find in a box of Cracker Jack or Fiddle-Faddle. Think teeny-tiny popcorn balls. As for the kernels that don’t pop? They’re called “old maids”. In the world of popcorn at least, you’d rather be a snowflake than an old maid.

Some more fun facts. Popcorn displaced movie candy during the WWII years because there was a shortage of sugar. Years later it’s still the more popular concession at the theater. On average every American consumes 58 quarts of popcorn every year. Picture those red/white striped cardboard containers you see when you purchase popcorn from a cart. Multiply by 58. You eat a lot of popcorn. But why shouldn’t you? It’s convenient, easy-to-make, and healthy as long as you use an air popper. Really healthy if you substitute olive oil for the butter, which a lot of people do these days. But I say ewwwwwww to that. Leave olive oil to the Mediterranean diet instead.

All this talk of popcorn has me thinking it’s time for dessert. It’s easy to forego the sweet stuff when savory snowflakes beckon. Just remember, it’s not a ball of popcorn, it’s a bowl. A proper presentation precedes perfect popcorn.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #2

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

Let it echo throughout the streets of Rome, Dave is no Michelangelo (and yes, I know Michelangelo didn’t design the Trevi Fountain but he could sure sculpt). In today’s effort to rise the LEGO fountain from its foundation, I made countless placement mistakes. I got four steps into Bag 4 – of 15 bags of pieces – and realized I’d placed everything just a little bit off on the foundation. That meant breaking it all down, going back to the first step, and starting over. Can you imagine my fate if I made this mistake with the real Trevi? Placed and set the travertine just a little bit off? The foreman would have my head! (which is no joke, at least not three hundred years ago).

Frankly, everything seemed off today. I kept getting the piece placement slightly wrong, as if I refused to learn from my last mistake. At one point I turned two pages forward in the instruction manual instead of one, skipping a full two steps in the build. And the below photo is what “broke the camel’s travertine”. Tell me reader, what’s wrong with this picture? Five little leftover pieces and one BIG piece, that’s what. LEGO never throws in big leftover pieces. Sure enough, I paged back through the manual, and there it was. I’d overlooked the step where you place that arch. Never mind that it’s buried under “pieces” of blue water now. Leave it out and our beautiful fountain might collapse into a pile of very expensive rubble.

You know who’s laughing about all of my missteps today? The singers in the music I chose for my accompaniment: Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. His opera may be about money, disguises, lovers and all that, but it sounded more like getting scolded over and over through song. You got overconfident, Dave (tra-la-la). You’re no sculptor, Dave (la-ha-ha). Maybe LEGO isn’t for you after all, Dave (wha-ha-ha-HA!)

The gleeful singing in “The Barber of Seville” is all in Italian, so for all I know they really did change their tune to berate my amateur building efforts. I took that to heart. Bags 5 and 6 are gonna have to wait until next week. I sure hope the foreman won’t look at this decision as “getting behind schedule”. He might have my head!

Running build time: 1 hr. 44 min.

Total leftover pieces: 10

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

It’s Thanksgiving Season (#1)

Listen carefully… hear the clock a-tick-tick-ticking? Better hurry up! You’re already a day (or more) into the Thanksgiving season and you have so much to do! “No Dave”, you correct me, “Thanksgiving’s just one day (or at most a long weekend) way-ay-ay at the end of the month… I still have plenty of time to prepare!” No you don’t. Junk that perception, online friends, because the times they are a-changin’. I, blogger Dave, hereby decree Thanksgiving to be three weeks… and the season’s already underway. So c’mon – get grateful already!

It’s fitting I’m writing this post on Halloween, “… the conclusion of spooky season…” as Lyssy in the City referred to it. And isn’t it true? Just like Christmas, the air goes out of the holiday balloon the very next day. Cinderella’s carriage turns back into a pumpkin at midnight (ironically). There is no “residual” spooky season on November 1st. Halloween died the night before.

Retailers are determined to steamroll Halloween and Thanksgiving with the Christmas season, of course. The artificial trees and decorations were available for purchase at Costco and Lowes this year before the Halloween candy even colored the shelves. As I said in Third-Wheel Meal two years ago, Thanksgiving is fighting an uphill battle between the ever-expanding seasons before and after. It’s like a sandwich with two massive pieces of bread but not much in between.

Thanksgiving is not just another holiday in my book; it’s a uniquely American holiday. It’s the one we’ve been celebrating in the U.S. for 160 years thanks to the persistence of one Sarah Josepha Hale (who also wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb”). Hale, along with Abraham Lincoln’s stroke of the presidential pen, made sure the holiday was “permanent… an American custom and institution”. Gives this juncture in the holiday season a little more respect, wouldn’t you say?

Like an Advent calendar, I propose we take twenty-three days to be grateful for what we have. Open the little cardboard door on any given morning of November and the question will always be the same: What are you thankful for today? Surely you can come up with twenty-three things. Or how about twenty-three people? Wouldn’t it be something if you told one person how grateful you are to have them in your life… every day until Thanksgiving Day?

As with Christmas, it’s not the wrapping; it’s the gift inside. Thanksgiving goes way deeper than turkey and football. If you’re planning a trip to America and don’t know much about Thanksgiving, VisitTheUsa.com is not helping my cause. The website reduces Thanksgiving into turkey and pie, Turkey Trots, parades, football, the pardoning of a single turkey, “shop ’til you drop”, and the travel challenges of a four-day weekend. Really? That’s the meaning of America’s Thanksgiving?

Maybe it would help if moviemakers and songwriters joined my cause. I mean, think about it. Halloween movies come to mind without much thought (with some, like A Nightmare on Elm Street, approaching ten sequels). Hallmark churns out Christmas movies faster than you churn out Christmas cookies. But are there any movies about Thanksgiving? Well, yes actually, just this year we have Thanksgiving (the movie). But please, don’t seek out the trailer. This garbage has nothing to do with gratitude and everything to do with gratuitous violence.

I was going to make the same case for music. Halloween has you dancing to “Thriller” and “Monster Mash”. Christmas has you “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”. There is no “Thanksgiving carol”. But then I remembered Amy Grant’s “‘Til the Season Comes ‘Round Again” (my wife’s favorite). It’s a song about Christmas, make no mistake, but you could argue there’s a little Thanksgiving dressing mixed into the first verse:

Come and gather around at the table
In the spirit of family and friends
And we’ll all join hands and remember this moment
‘Til the season comes ’round again

Get what I’m saying? Take the next three weeks and find the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Like Halloween, the treats will still be there on November 23rd. Like Christmas, you’ll still have the stress of travel and getting things done. Those holidays are about finding your inner child. This one’s about finding your inner adult. So c’mon – get grateful already!

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Not-So-Thruways

We live on a long, straight-run residential street, with the option to exit at either end to access the outside world. Close by, a cluster of our neighbors live on a short, stubby lane, where you won’t get very far before having to turn around and go back the way you came. A sign posted at their street’s entrance declares, “Not A Through Street”. It’s what the French – and we Americans – call a cul-de-sac.

In a rather desperate effort to come up with something Halloween-related this week, I landed weakly on “dead-end streets”. Of course, these tiny avenues are often very much alive. Cul-de-sac’s host a quaint gathering of houses, with a few on the straight run and even fewer around the end circle. The setup allows these neighbors to get to know each other easier. And with so little traffic, the end circle encourages kids to do what their parents normally nix: play in the street.

But maybe I shouldn’t paint/assume such a rosy picture (especially with Halloween right around the corner). What if your neighbor living right next door on that little end circle is someone you’d sooner see in a horror movie? Or what if the statistics are true: even more people are struck by cars on a cul-de-sac because of the assumed safety of a quiet street? Finally, consider the double-hyphenated phrase staring you right in the face. Cul-de-sac – French translation – “bottom of bag”. Suddenly your house feels like one of those throwaway candies you find deep down in your trick-or-treat sack.

I didn’t know “cul-de-sac” had such a negative connotation. I found it rather quaint because it’s double-hyphenated (and French). Curious, I went in search of other double-hyphenated words to see if I could find something more positive. Know-it-all. Word-of-mouth (which is often gossip). Son-in-law. Okay, that last one has potential. I mean, he’s only been married to my daughter for year now, so…

Here’s a really nasty double-hyphenated for you. Fer-de-lance. It means “head of spear”, which isn’t so nasty until you realize it’s the name of a snake; an extremely poisonous viper who lives in the tropics. The fer-de-lance was the killer (literally) in a 1974 movie by the same name. A movie I never should’ve watched at the fairly innocent age of twelve. Fer-De-Lance was the original Snakes on a Plane, only the plane was a submarine carrying a crate full of deadly creepy-crawlies. How’s that for Halloween-scary?

Like Fer-De-Lance, Cul-De-Sac was also a movie (1966), about “a hermit living with his wife in a large dank castle on an island… terrorized by two escaped prisoners.” Not exactly a romantic comedy, and no explanation of the film’s title, other than maybe this couple finding themselves at their ultimate dead-end.

Let’s circle back to the suburban version of the cul-de-sac (please!) Two addresses ago we actually lived on one. There were two houses on each side of the straight-run and four houses on the end-circle. We lived on the circle. Were we tight with our neighbors? No! Each of our driveways were long and steep so our houses were actually pretty far apart. I still remember how we’d greet our neighbors faithfully only one day out of the year. What day? Halloween, when we’d accompany our kids to their front doors.

We need to end this more-Halloween-than-I thought post on a positive note, so I don’t have you thinking about poisonous snakes and escaped prisoners. Cul-de-Sac is a locale on the beautiful Caribbean island of Saint Martin. It was also the name of a 1990s alternative rock band. And Cul-de-Sac was the title of “a light-hearted comic strip centered around a four-year-old and her suburban life experiences.” Okay, now we’re talking.

Some advice before I close. If you live on a cul-de-sac, I suggest you double-stock the candy this Halloween. After all, trick-or-treaters who make it to your dead-end street may find themselves going round and round the end circle without realizing what they’re doing. Keep an eye out for repeat customers.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Big Shoes to Fill-y

Last Sunday, the day before Halloween, our neighborhood hosted a lively parade. Kids of all ages dressed in adorable to “a-horror-full” costumes, to trick-or-treat past each driveway… on horseback. In a bit of a role reversal, we residents walked treats out to the horses and riders (because trust me, a stallion trotting up your front walk is not recommended). Candy for the kids, cookies for the parents who walked beside them, and carrots for the hardworking horses. As you would expect, a steady “clip-clop” filled the air for hours. Yet it could’ve been a lot quieter.

Here’s an idea I never ever would’ve thought of. Take a pair of sneakers, break them down into their component parts, and reassemble them to fit a horse’s hoof. Making a statement of purely fashion (vs. function), Horse Kicks allow your equine to sport two pairs of your favorite New Balance, Adidas, or Nikes. These giant “tennis shoes” are built on top of a pre-made protective boot so they really do support an animal weighing a thousand pounds or more. Order yours today for only $1,200.

Sorry, I’m not buying. I don’t think sneakers are a good look on horses, any more than when paired with formalwear on a human. If a filly could talk, she would say, “Get those ridiculous things off of me!”, even though ladies love shoes. Sneakers are best left to walkers and athletes, while steel horseshoes, as they have for thousands of years, fill a horse’s bill as comfortably as a couple of pairs of flip-flops (er, “clip-clops?”)

I can’t imagine the effort it takes for Horse Kicks to create their shoes (besides the seventeen hours of assembly time) but they don’t work nearly as hard as a traditional horseshoer. That person, a farrier, might as well be an ironworker. Watch one in action sometime as he/she trims a horse’s hoof or hammers the steel shoes to achieve the perfect fit. It’s the kind of backbreaking work that can lead to early retirement.

Occasionally a horse throws a shoe, which is probably the origin of horseshoes as a game. The first time I “threw a shoe”- besides getting it nowhere near the stake – I remember thinking, “Man, these are kind of heavy”. (A horse wouldn’t agree.) And weight matters in the game because the shoe needs to fly a long way, like forty feet, for the chance for a “ringer”. Yes, horseshoes is basic (and predates similar games like ring toss, cornhole, and bocce) but it has its finer points. You flip a shoe to determine who goes first. After players throw two shoes each you’ve completed an “inning”. And a “dead ringer” really is a horseshoes term (too complicated to explain here), not just someone who looks like someone else.

[Snack break. Speaking of horseshoes, if you’re looking for “the best darn donuts in Colorado” you should check out Horseshoe Donuts, where we used to live just north of Colorado Springs. You’ll pay upwards of $25/dozen but trust me, these shoes… er, doughnuts are huge and worthy of expensive tastes. Most are shaped like traditional rings but the raised, glazed variety are giant horseshoes.]

Even if I never buy a pair of Horse Kicks, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. You’ll probably see several on display this weekend at the Breeder’s Cup races in Lexington, KY (close to where they’re created). Part of the company’s initiative is to “bring awareness to the Bluegrass State”. And 10% of the proceeds go to central Kentucky charities. All of which makes Horse Kicks a worthy product. Not that I expect to see any in next year’s neigh-h-h-h-borhood trick-or-treat parade. It’ll be, as usual, clip-clops in steel flip-flops.

Some content sourced from the CNN Style article, “You can now buy $1,200 sneakers — for horses”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Lost in a Dense Fog

When I first learned to play the piano, it was a challenge to master the weight of the keys. Weighted keys allow the piano’s sound to be louder or softer depending on how hard you press them down. Since fingers vary in size and shape it takes practice before the index and ring fingers (for example) generate the same volume on the keyboard. In hindsight, if I’d chosen the theremin over the piano I could’ve developed the technique much faster because this instrument makes its music without weighted keys. In fact, the theremin makes music without any touch at all.

I should’ve posted about the theremin closer to Halloween because it produces one of the eeriest sounds you’ll ever hear. Click the red preview button on this list of Theramin Sound Effects and tell me if you disagree. Doesn’t your mind conjure up a ghostly apparition floating in the darkness of a haunted house? The theremin provides the perfect soundtrack for all things scary. New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg once described the theremin’s wail as “a cello lost in a dense fog, crying because it does not know how to get home.” I like that (and it’s much classier than “pig squeal”).

How the theremin creates its unique sound involves too much science to keep your attention today (and more words than I want to type). Suffice it to say, the instrument has two antennae; a looped one to control volume and an upright one to delineate pitch. The player’s darting hand/finger movements – touching nothing but the air in between – create its spooky music.

Now watch the following performance. Seeing the theremin played is almost as jaw-dropping as listening to it.

I find the theremin to be a fish out of water next to traditional orchestra instruments, yet there are several other weirdos out there. The bassoon features a tiny mouthpiece attached to a massive piece of black pipe and requires a deliberate overbite to create its nasal tones. The glockenspiel (which gets points for a fancy name) is really nothing more than a metal xylophone. The tam-tam is a giant gong, lucky to be struck more than once in a performance. And the hand saw doubles as a musical instrument when you warp and release the blade (and sounds pretty darned close to the theremin). But each of these outliers requires physical touch to make their sounds. The theremin sings with mere jabs of the air.

[Author’s aside: Every time I write theremin my brain wants to override with Theraflu, the over-the-counter cold and flu medicine (“Discover the Powerful Relief!”) You don’t find many thera- words in the English language – therapy being the only other one I can come up with. I’m happy to announce I need neither Theraflu nor therapy at the moment.]

The theremin was invented in the 1920s by Russian physicist Leon Theremin (whose life story involved a lot more than science). RCA picked up the commercial production rights but the musical instrument never really developed a following. Instead, its soprano voice showed up randomly in music and movies. If you recall the Beach Boys’ hit, “Good Vibrations” you should also recall the theramin solo at the end of the song. You’ll also hear its moan in the opening bars of Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies”. But the theramin seems a more logical fit in the soundtracks of horror and science fiction movies like The Spiral Staircase, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, and more recently, Monster House.

My favorite account of the theremin (and with this I close) is a collection of melodies recorded and blasted into outer space back in 2001. The effort was an attempt to communicate with other worlds, including Gershwin’s Summertime and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The name of this collection? First Theremin Concert for Extraterrestrials. Seriously? We chose the theremin? Wouldn’t these classics have sounded a whole lot smarter on the instruments they were originally written for? No wonder the (more intelligent) races out there haven’t stopped by our little planet to say hello.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Third-Wheel Meal

In last week’s ’tis the Seasonings post, I wondered why “ginger” and “red hair” were synonymous. Paula from Monday Morning Rail replied with the answer which probably trumps all others (thanks, Paula!). Ginger Grant, the glam character from the sixties sitcom Gilligan’s Island had a healthy head of red hair. Sometime after the sixties a “ginger” became a person with red hair. I’m satisfied, so let’s move to a question more appropriate for this week. Why is (America’s) Thanksgiving celebrated on a Thursday?

Yes, it’s time for my annual Thanksgiving rant. Rather, my everything-steps-all-over-Thanksgiving rant. It’s not really an annual rant but perhaps it should be. Three years ago I had so much to vent about Thanksgiving’s due, it took me two blog posts to let off the steam (see A Distant Third). This year I realized, zero progress has been made since then. In fact, the situation is snowballing. Thanksgiving is finding less and less air as it gasps between the behemoths known as Halloween and Christmas.

Poor choice of word, “snowballing”. It’ll make readers think about Christmas and I need you to stay focused. My campaign is to keep each of the year-end holidays corralled into its respective month. In other words, November equals Thanksgiving. (Repeat ten times, please). Turkeys and pumpkin pie, not Santas and plum pudding.

There, I said it. Apologies to those of you who’ve already shopped and wrapped presents. Apologies to the rest of you who’ve already decorated your houses. I’m just trying to give Thanksgiving its rightful place among the “big three” instead of its laggard position as “third wheel”.

You can name a dozen things associated with Halloween, and two dozen more with Christmas. But with Thanksgiving? Three (at least here in America). We have the meal itself, the parades, and football. That’s pretty much it.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the American Thanksgiving trifecta. The meal is hanging in there despite efforts to make it healthier. Turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie are still Thanksgiving staples (while “tofurky” is not). I sometimes wonder why I don’t enjoy these foods on other days of the year as well. Also, more people make the Thanksgiving meal at home than order online or go to a restaurant. (Do I have the data to back this up? No, I do not.) But I must acknowledge Friendsgiving, which has become common enough to remove the quotation marks. Not only is Friendsgiving celebrated on any day but Thursday, the table spread can be decidedly different. Watch out. There may come a November when – GASP! – more people celebrate the “friends” version than the “family”.

Parades remain more about Thanksgiving than the other two holidays. You’ll find the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television this week and at the same time, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Plymouth, MA host large-scale parades. But here’s my Davey-downer factoid. The Macy’s Parade may be the world’s largest (as well as the second-oldest in America) but it’s also an imposter. It began as the “Macy’s Christmas Parade” in 1924, designed to launch a longer retail season at the end of the year. So you see, the name may have changed but the parade is still decidedly “holly-jolly”.

Football brings out the smirk in sports fans again this Thanksgiving. As they have every year since 1934 (save the WWII years) the NFL’s Detroit Lions will be playing on Thanksgiving Day. As they have been every year (seemingly), the Detroit Lions are a truly awful football team. In the last twenty years the Lions have amassed exactly four winning seasons. This year? The Lions are the only team in the NFL without a win. The Lions are so bad in fact, the NFL has added two other games to your Thanksgiving Day lineup so you have options.

We’re almost done here, but don’t panic; I haven’t forgotten the original question. Why is Thanksgiving celebrated on a Thursday? Here’s the easy answer. President Lincoln made it so back in 1863, as the final Thursday in November. President Roosevelt also made it so back in 1941, more specifically the fourth Thursday in November. Yeah, but… why a Thursday?

Here’s the real answer (or at least my answer). Thanksgiving is on a Thursday. Thursday is named for the Norse God Thor. Thor is the God of Thunder. See the pattern? Thanksgiving-Thursday-Thor-Thunder. It’s the whole “Th” thing. Thanksgiving doesn’t really fit on a Friday (but maybe Friendsgiving does). Besides, by Friday we’ve forgotten all about turkey and stuffing as we turn to computers and shopping malls.

Now then, banish all that “Th” nonsense from memory. The real intent here is to give Thanksgiving its proper time and space mid-holiday season. Let’s move Turkey Day from “third wheel” to “equal wheel” by finding more Thanksgiving stakes to claim in the month of November. Maybe we should all dress up as pilgrims. Maybe we should also have our kids “trade” instead of “trick-or-treat”.

With that, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. And next week, I might even wish you a Merry Christmas. You know, in December.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Peanuts and Pumpkins

Three years ago, New York Magazine’s website Vulture ranked all forty-five Peanuts animated television specials from worst to best, including a paragraph on each one to justify its ranking. I wouldn’t have guessed Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy appeared in fifteen television specials let alone forty-five. But let’s be honest; only two Peanuts adventures have had any staying power: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (#2 on Vulture’s list), and A Charlie Brown Christmas (#1).

Maybe I’ll weigh in on the Christmas special in a couple of months, but with Halloween on the horizon I need to speak to the runner-up. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown first aired on television in 1966, so those who were alive back then (me) have the chance to see it for the 56th time this year. But maybe not? The networks stopped showing Great Pumpkin two years ago. Other than PBS in select locations, you’ll have to buy the DVD or subscribe to Apple TV+ to watch Charlie Brown get another rock in his trick-or-treat bag.

Writing about a Peanuts special dates me – there’s no question. But it’s still worth the words. The Peanuts gang was the comic strip of my youth. I remember the anticipation of the Sunday morning newspaper and the “funnies” pages. Charles M. Schulz and his Peanuts characters always got the first slot. When the specials debuted in the mid-60s, it was a big deal. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown only showed up once a year, in mid-October. We didn’t have DVRs (let alone streaming) back then, so watch it live or you’d miss it. Peanuts specials were always the hot topic of conversation at grade school the next day.

After so many watches, Great Pumpkin becomes an interesting study. You pick up on the little things, the ones which would implode under the weight of today’s social media scrutiny. Right out of the credits, Linus & Lucy head to a patch to pick out a pumpkin. On the way, Linus picks up an apple among the fallen leaves, takes a single bite, and tosses it into a trash can. (Unnecessary waste!). In another scene, Lucy stabs a pumpkin with a giant knife as she begins carving (Children with weapons!). Then Linus looks on in horror and says, “I didn’t realize you were going to kill it!” (Violence!)

Great Pumpkin touches on other themes to sink today’s children’s shows, including bullying, teasing, and casual use of words like “stupid” and “blockhead”. Charlie Brown is the butt of several jokes, including Lucy pulling the football away just as he tries to kick, and the girls using the back of his head to draw a pumpkin carving design. Yes, I laughed at these scenes when I was a kid, but only because I wasn’t that kid (and because it was the 1960s humor).

Here’s an oddity with Great Pumpkin. You’d think a short animation would be a continuous story. Not so. Great Pumpkin jumps awkwardly between disconnected scenes, from carving pumpkins to trick-or-treating to a Halloween Party. The middle minutes shift randomly to Snoopy acting out his costumed “World War I Flying Ace” in the middle of France. It’s as if Great Pumpkin didn’t have enough Halloween material to fill a half-hour, or at least needed an excuse to include Snoopy in the story.

Finally, “the Great Pumpkin” itself is completely akin to Santa Claus, but for a different holiday. Linus writes a letter to the Great Pumpkin to say he’s looking forward to the arrival on Halloween night and hoping for lots of presents. The Great Pumpkin visits pumpkin patches the way Santa Claus visits houses. There’s even a mention of “pumpkin carols”. You’re left wondering why this figment of Linus’ imagination wasn’t a little more unique.

If you haven’t watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, I probably haven’t given you reasons to rush to your television. It’s simple and disjointed, and the animation doesn’t win the show any awards (even in the 1960s). But just like A Charlie Brown Christmas, the characters are endearing, and the story has a pretty good message. I’ll probably find myself looking for it again next year.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Lucky Strikes

Have you checked your basement lately? (uh, Dave, I don’t have a basement). How about the crawl space (nope, don’t have one of those either). Maybe a deep closet, the kind with empty space behind the hanging clothes? If I haven’t pegged you yet, just lift up your area rugs (assuming your floors have been around a while). Why? You might find something interesting down there! Loose change. Old love letters. Bowling balls.

Bowling balls?

A small part of Dave’s “bowl” collection

Talk about a lucky strike. Another Dave in my country (he of Norton Shores, MI) recently began a DIY house renovation when he unearthed a bowling ball from behind the crumbling concrete of his back porch. So he pawed the sand some more and found another ball. And another. Pretty soon he had fifteen. By the time our industrious friend cleaned out his subterranean bowling alley – er, crawl space, he’d amassed 150 balls – some black, most blue, and all designed to knock down pins. I’m sure Dave would agree with this Dave when I say, “What the HECK?“

Seriously, how would you react if you found hundreds of bowling balls under your house? Me, I’d wonder if they weren’t part of the structural foundation (Don’t laugh; a 1940’s house we used to live in had glued-together schoolroom yardsticks in the walls.) My next thought would go to an abandoned underground city, with my house right on top of the bowling alley. And my final thought? Aliens. Aliens put those hundreds of bowling balls down there.

Norton Shores Dave was more rational than my own thinking. After finding the first fifteen balls he stopped digging and picked up the phone to Brunswick Bowling. Some of the balls had date stamps back to the 1950s and Dave was concerned about toxicity. (Good thinking there, Dave.) But Brunswick glanced at a few of the photos he sent and said the balls were fine. So it’s official: bowling balls last forever.

Hidden rooms – and the hidden treasures they contain – have always captured my imagination. In the movie National Treasure, Nicolas Cage sorts through clue after clue on the hunt for a hidden fortune. The final scene where the underground room reveals itself in bursting firelight is jaw-dropping. Or how about any movie scene where a sliding bookcase protects a passage to the secret space beyond? Wouldn’t that be a great feature in your house?

I designed a house with a sliding bookcase once (true story), back in my days as an architect. The hidden room was accessed from the landing halfway up an open staircase, behind innocent-looking shelves of books. The hidden room was meant to be a home office, with a small balcony overlooking the backyard. I pictured the owner’s guests, standing on the lawn and looking up, saying, “Wait a sec’, how come I haven’t seen that room?

Admittedly, bowling balls aren’t a sexy find (even 150 of them). It’s not like you’d go, “Perfect… just what I’d been hoping for!” That’s not stopping Norton Shores Dave, however. He thinks there may be even more balls down there, but – letdown ending to the story – he’ll probably just turn them into decorative pavers in the yard.

Plant orange trees… find a church instead!

Other hidden-space stories yield more satisfying treasures. Last year a gardener in England – simply pulling weeds – unearthed sixty-three gold coins from the era of Henry VIII (now that’s what you call “paydirt”). Another gardener – this one in Turkey – found an entire 6th-century church under the ten acres of land where he was about to plant orange trees. Old rolled-up movie posters under the floorboards of a house were so pristine they brought $600,000 USD at auction. Finally, in 2009, an English doctor passed away and left his house to his relatives. What they overlooked for many months? The dusty, vintage 1937 Bugatti in the garage. Selling price: $4.2 million.

Maybe the best finds are up in the attic. In 2013 a family found a Van Gogh in the rafters of the house of deceased relatives. The painting had been gathering dust for over a century because the original owner thought it was a fake. Not so. It turned out to be a priceless example from Van Gogh’s most prolific years. Okay, not quite “priceless”, but how about $90.6 million?

It’s only fitting – as Halloween approaches – I ask you to crack the seal on your hidden spaces. You’ll probably need a flashlight. You’ll brush aside spiderwebs or put the boot on a creepy crawler or two. But c’mon, you know you’re curious. There could be something valuable right there underneath your feet. A stash of cash. A famous painting. Or 150 bowling balls!

Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “Home renovation leads to the discovery of over 150 bowling balls under a family’s porch”, and the lovemoney.com article, “People who bought homes and found treasure”.

Halloween’s Element of Surprise

Our grocer dedicates an entire aisle to Halloween this time of year. It’s a pile-on of kid costumes, yard decor, plastic jack-o’-lanterns, and party supplies. You’ll also find massive bags of assorted small candies, enough to load up your front door bowl with a single pour. These treats are individually wrapped and brand-familiar to carefully conform to the holiday’s “safe standards”. In other words, there’s no element of surprise in all that sugar.

When was the last time you were treated to a little something you didn’t expect? Here’s a good example. My wife and I traveled to Texas last weekend to visit our son. As we settled into the hotel room we noticed a tray on the table with two bottles of water and a couple of wrapped candies. Not so unusual. But then we read the little card next to the tray. Not only was the water free of charge (hotels typically stick it to you with bottled water) but the candies were handmade salted caramels from a local culinary kitchen. Suddenly I’m thinking, “What a nice hotel!”

Perhaps you know a few other hotels with the same gesture, as Doubletree does with its chocolate-chip cookies (see Calories of Contentment for more on that). But unlike our Texas hotel, Doubletree always goes with the chocolate-chip cookies. Stay there enough and you come to expect them. No surprise.

That, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with Halloween today. You still get the occasional trick (TP in the trees? Shaving cream in the pumpkins?) but the “or-treat” routine has been reduced to just that – routine. Think about a child’s anticipation for the big night. Hours spent making sure their costume stands out in a crowd. Miles spent covering sidewalks and front walks. Fingers spent on doorbells and knockers, all so they can get, what… another fun-size Hershey bar? Where-oh-where is the element of surprise?

Back in the “ol’ days” (because I’m feeling old today) a lot of front-door Halloween treats were homemade. People handed out family-recipe popcorn balls and caramel apples. My mother made the frosted ginger pumpkin cookies you see here. A guy down the street dressed as Dracula and manned a little round grill in his driveway, handing out barbecued hot dog bites on toothpicks. You never knew what you’d walk away with until you made it to the next house.

Creative treats only boosted the night’s excitement back then. I remember catching up with friends in the darkened streets to compare the collective efforts in our bags. More importantly, the wide variety of treats upped the ante on what one candy-ranking opinion piece referred to as “HTV” or Halloween Trade Value. After all, the most important event of the night was the post trick-or-treat trade, right? You’d spill the contents of your pillowcase into a big pile on the floor and the back-n-forth would begin. “I’ll give you three rolls of Smarties and a Baby Ruth for your Charleston Chew”. Yes, friends, those were the days.

Everything changed when Halloween lost its young-and-innocent status. Parents inspected treat bags to filter out anything remotely suspicious. Homemade items only made it as far as the next-door neighbor’s kids or backyard Halloween parties. Suddenly a treat didn’t pass muster if it wasn’t recognizable and wrapped. The creative license of trick-or-treating has expired.

But hold on now. What about the other 364 days of the year? Can’t the element of surprise show up on one or more of those? Can’t we still be caught off guard… in a good way?

Here’s an attempt. At least two companies offer monthly treats by subscription and you have no idea what’s coming. SnackCrate describes its product as “a world of snack surprises – monthly”. TryTreats advertises “each month’s box will feature snacks from a different country in the world. The country you’ll receive is a secret until you receive the box!” Kind of a spin on my ol’-days Halloween nights, don’t you think?

Speaking of treats I think the dog got wind of this topic. The other night I prepped his dinner with the usual two cups of kibble topped with a few bits of lunch meat. He ate the bits but left the kibble. He’s never done that before. Maybe he’s bored with it? I need to shake things up. Throw in a few doggie treats. Add the ol’ Halloween element of surprise and get his tail wagging again.

The Ghost of Saint Francis

“Saint Francis” (Digital Art by Randy Wollenmann)

I’ve long been a fan of the Google Calendar app, even after switching my mobile from Android to Apple. Google Calendar allows the option to add “Christian Holidays” so I promptly checked the box. We’re talking Christmas and Easter of course, but how about the Feast Day of Saint Francis (last Sunday), Saint David (3/1), and Saint Patrick (3/17)? Saint Patrick sure, but why also Francis and David? There are hundreds of saints yet Google chose just three. My curiosity was piqued.

So begins my beyond-the-grave story, perfect with Halloween on the horizon. Google’s choice of saint days got me wondering if there’s a spectral connection between me (David) and Francis. So I dove into the details. Now all I can say is, be careful what you wonder about.

The quick history of Francis. He’s the patron saint of animals. He was an Italian living in the 1200s from the central hill town of Assisi. Francis grew up wealthy but abandoned his riches to serve the Church and the poor. But it’s the animals that make him so popular among today’s saints. He (supposedly) communicated with wolves. He often preached to flocks of birds. He built the very first Christmas crèche, including live animals alongside the manger.

Now then, my Francis ghost story. Let’s cover this spookiness from present to past. I’ve discovered a pattern of events that has me convinced Saint Francis is trying to reach out. As a matter of fact, he’s been in touch every ten years back to when I was a baby. If you agree you can see why I’m expecting another “call” in 2023.

2013: I’ve told you Francis is the patron saint of animals but guess what? He’s also the patron saint of avoiding fires. In June 2013, my family and I evacuated our Colorado house for a week (horses and dogs in tow) to escape one of the worst fires in our state’s history. When we returned, our house was not only intact but had no smoke damage. Meanwhile, over 500 properties within a five-mile radius were completely destroyed.

(Also in) 2013: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected Pope. He promptly changed his name to Francis. There have been 266 Popes in history, but Cardinal Bergoglio is the very first to select the name “Francis”.

2003: The Front Range of the Colorado Rockies experienced one of the worst blizzards in our state’s history. In a matter of hours a single storm dropped over thirty inches of snow, with drifts of five feet or more. My family and I were snow-locked in our house for over a week. 100,000 residents lost power while 4,000 travelers were stuck at the international airport in Denver. Saint Francis is also the patron saint of the environment. Was he making his presence felt with unprecedented weather?
Assisi’s sister city

1993: My family and I moved from San Francisco to Colorado. San Francisco (named for Francis) is the sister city of his birth town of Assisi. But here’s where I really paused. Francis is also the patron saint of… Colorado. And how many other U.S. states chose Francis as their patron saint? Zero.

1983: I’m in my junior year in college, studying abroad in Italy. The patron saint of Italy is… Francis, of course. I also traveled to Assisi while I was there, including a visit to the church where Francis is buried. This is the only time I’ve ever been to Italy.

1973: Acclaimed biographer Ira Peck writes, The Life and Words of St. Francis of Assisi. It’s a short read, with easy language intended for middle-schoolers. Where was I in 1973? Starting my first year of middle school.

1963: On March 21st, the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary closed for good after thirty years. Alcatraz is the famous island prison in the San Francisco Bay. What does Alcatraz have to do with my ghost? Back in 1202, a young Francis was thrown in prison for a year, captured while serving a military effort. His spiritual conversion from wealthy patron to humble priest, it is said, took place during this time in prison.

And there you have it. Every ten years – starting the year after I was born – Saint Francis seems to have reached out to me. Oh, one more thing. My wife and I have a statue of Saint Francis in our garden. “Of course you do”, says Francis. He’s been standing quietly there for years, facing the house, just keeping his eye on us.

Francis will reach out to me again in 2023, I’m sure of it now. He’ll find another way to make his presence felt. When I read up on him I noted he’s also the patron saint against dying alone and the patron saint of needleworkers. Against dying alone? Am I destined to perish alongside several others in 2023? That’s not very nice of you, Francis. I’d better take up knitting.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.