It appears Fall officially has arrived and soon Halloween will be upon us. There will be blood-curdling shrieks, moans, eerie, and unearthly sounds from all manner of creeps and goblins to send us searching for safe hiding places. But once you ignore Congress, it will be much more peaceful.
One Halloween many years ago, at the last minute my girlfriend at the time decided to get a pumpkin for her neighbor’s kids. She’d discovered their mother didn’t buy one because the family was strapped for cash. It was already dark that Halloween night when we went out searching for the large orange gourd. It was on the far East Side of Cicero, which isn’t well known for a proliferation of pumpkin patches. Bars, strip joints, gangsters dumped in the sanitary canal maybe, but not pumpkin patches. We finally found a pumpkin-seller who had flipped off his strings of lights over the preciously empty lot that was now a pumpkin boutique just as we pulled up. I told him we desperately needed a pumpkin, otherwise my little sister would be sold to the gypsies. So, to save my little sister, he reluctantly gave us a few minutes. As we scrambled through the meager selection of leftovers, I spotted a beautiful, nicely shaped, huge pumpkin, probably still there because it was too big for the average human, with any common sense, to carve. Because I didn’t fit that description, I picked it up and almost doubled my double hernia carrying it to the weigh scale outside his shack.
He said, “That’s a 63-pounder, y’know.”
I said, “I know. I just ruptured myself carrying it.”
He told me pumpkins were 10¢ a pound, but because it was late and he didn’t want to be bothered getting rid of it, we could have it for $1.50. My girlfriend paid him, I dumped it in the trunk, and we drove to the home of her neighbor’s kids.
I hauled my overblown orange treasure upstairs to their apartment, while my girlfriend carried a sack of Halloween candy. By the time we reached the door, I was sick of this Halloween and every Halloween I’d ever lived through. When the kids saw the giant pumpkin, they jumped up and down with glee and figured they could make a playhouse out of it when Halloween was over. The kitchen table wobbled when I set it there. After I cut open the top, I was in the shell up to my armpit in pumpkin slime doing the hollowing and removing of seeds, and still had to hold the spoon by the end of the handle to reach the bottom. The kids drew a face and I carved it. Their mother had a votive candle to put inside, although I thought a Yule log would be better. We left when the kids happily sorted through Halloween treats by the light of the Great Pumpkin. I hobbled away to soothe my aching groin.
Speaking of aching groins, I heard that orange-faced guy in the White House is going to Halloween gatherings disguised as a president. There isn’t a disguise in existence that will make that believable. Because the Trumps aren’t displaying a jack-o-lantern this year, Donald is going to sit with his head in the window.
A final tip: If some large trick-or-treaters appear on your doorstep disguised as ISIS terrorists and wearing Make ISIS Great Again caps, slam the door. They really are recently-escaped-from-Kurdish-prison ISIS terrorists. You may see one of them carrying a portable rocket launcher with a “Thank You Donald Trump” bumper sticker on the barrel.
Have a nice Halloween.