Skip to main content

Misfits at Halloween

In this episode - Misfits at Halloween . . .

It’s autumn, and Halloween is approaching - how do you capture the experience, the smells, the rustling sounds of multicolored falling leaves, the quiet, peaceful feeling, the solitude of life in a small town? News flash, I’m here to tell you it’s not always as tranquil as sentimental storytellers like to depict it.

Admittedly, like all agrarian communities, Cuba had its pranksters. Thankfully, though, in our small, rural farming community of the late 1960s and early 70s, I’m happy to report there was no teen violence, no gang shootings, and no serious vandalism.

Well, ok, we did torment the local policeman, who we dubbed Barney Fife (I don’t remember his name). In the fall, most families would have harvested their gardens by Halloween, but inevitably, there would be leftovers.

A group of us would hide behind Jim Welch’s garden fence on Main Street and hurl the leftover, soft, rotten tomatoes at Barney’s squad car as he patrolled the town.

For those of you who grew up or now live in a metropolitan area, patrolling our town meant cruising up and down Main Street at about 15 MPH, a remarkable distance of 0.6 of a mile.

Anyway, we were cunning. After dark, we would fill paper bags with rotten tomatoes and shower Barney’s car as he patrolled Main Street.

There were three of us, Perry, Nathan, and me.

Immediately after a tomato clobbering, we would high-tail it over fences, through backyards, to Nathan’s house, casually resting on his front porch as Barney drove up in front of the house.

With trepidation, Barney would roll his window down and ask, “What are you boys up to tonight?”

“Nothin’, Just hangin’ out.”

As soon as he pulled away, in a flash, we were back behind that fence on Main Street. And yet again, he would get pounded with rotten tomatoes.

We were stealth masters and projectile launch angle experts. Barney never caught us or even figured out it was us. The blame always went to the local high school boys who raced around town standing in the back of an old pickup truck. They were loud, obnoxious jerks. They deserved it.

Ah, yes, Halloween memories. I can’t imagine kids doing anything as docile as that today. On second thought, maybe you have a dramatic story to share?

This is Patrick Ball. Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode.

Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
I remember one Halloween when 3 of us...I won't give names since our classmates might read this...set out to soap the windows on a certain house. That house belonged to Mrs. Neff. Cuba High people know who Mrs. Neff was...a substitute teacher who most of us hated. So on a Friday night we 3 went to the football game. We told our parents that anyway. Instead we went Mrs. Neff's house in darkness and soaped the windows on one side if the house. We were almost done when *BAM* the door swung open and Mr.Neff was running at us! We ran like hell and went to the football game. We were standing together talking when I saw Mr. Neff and a cop coming our way. Turns out his son in law was a State Trouper. Mr. Neff told us to give him our names. Which we did. Our parents found out about it from the Neffs who were going to turn us in to the State's Attorney! Instead our parents made us clean the Neff's windows and they let us go with a warning to never do it again. I'm sure it was embarrassing for two of our parents who had businesses. Needless to say...we never went near Neff's house again! :)
October 7, 2020 at 8:59 AM
Randy said…
I remember Perry telling me that.. LOL!
October 12, 2020 at 10:47 AM
Patrick B. Ball said…
Yes or no, Anonymous is Marty? I'm sure there are many more stories that have been forgotten.
October 13, 2020 at 5:24 AM
Anonymous said…
The only clue I can give you is...who did you sit by in Mr. Coleman's Algebra..or was it Geometry class? :) In other words...you guessed it. :)
October 16, 2020 at 1:34 PM
Post a Comment

Most Popular of All Time

Boy on a Beam

In this special bonus episode, Boy on a Beam. In a world long ago, when the days moved quite slow, Before buzzes and beeps and the fast things we know, A boy sat quite still on a very fine day, Just staring at nothing . . . and thinking away. No tablets! No gadgets! No screens shining bright! No earbuds stuck in from morning till night. No lists, no charts, and no chores to be done. He just sat there thinking—that's quiet-time fun! His name was Young Albert. He sat in his chair, Thinking of things that weren’t really there. “Suppose,” said Young Albert, with eyes open wide, “I ran super fast with my arms by my side! Suppose I ran faster than anyone knew, And caught up to sunshine that zoomed past me—too! If I hopped on its back for a light-speedy ride, What secrets would I find tucked away deep inside?” “Would stars look like sprinkles, all shiny and small? Would UP feel like sideways? Would BIG feel like Tall?” He giggled and wondered and thought, and he dreamed, Till his head fel...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Fear Becomes the Default

In this special episode, When Fear Becomes the Default. Early Sunday morning, I was cycling past a small veterans’ pocket park in San Marcos. The air was still, the streets nearly empty. On one corner stood a young woman, alone, holding a hand-painted sign that read: “Be ANGRY. ICE agents are murdering people.” I pedaled past, but the words stayed with me. I knew the context—the footage and headlines from Minneapolis the day before, already ricocheting through the country and hardening opinions. Even in the quiet of the ride, the noise followed. Two miles later, I stopped at a red light. A black car with dark windows pulled up inches from my bike. My heart jumped. My first instinct wasn’t neighbor —it was threat . I found myself bracing, scanning, and wondering if the person inside was angry, armed, or looking for trouble. Then the door opened. A well-dressed young woman stepped out, walked to the trunk, and pulled out a sign that read “Open House.” She turned, smiled brightly, and sa...
2 comments
Read more

The Thought Experiment–Revisited

In this episode. The Thought Experiment–Revisited The Boy on a Light Beam In 1895, a sixteen-year-old boy did something we rarely allow ourselves to do anymore. He stared into space and let his mind wander. No phone. No notes. No “Optimization Hacks” for his morning routine. Just a question: What would happen if I chased a beam of light—and actually caught it? That boy was Albert Einstein . And that single act of curiosity—a Gedankenexperiment , a thought experiment—eventually cracked open Newton’s tidy universe and rearranged our understanding of time itself. Not bad for an afternoon of daydreaming. Imagine if Einstein had been “productive” instead. He would have logged the light-beam idea into a Notion database, tagged it #CareerGrowth, and then promptly ignored it to attend a forty-five-minute “Sync” about the color of the departmental logo. He’d have a high Efficiency Score—and we’d still be stuck in a Newtonian universe , wondering why the Wi-Fi is slow. In a post I wrote back in...
2 comments
Read more

Sweden Called . . . They Said No.

Have you ever wondered about  the Nobel Prize? Let's look at Where Genius Meets “Wait—Where’s My Medal?” Every October, the Nobel Prizes are announced, and humanity pauses to celebrate the "greatest benefit to mankind." And every year, like clockwork, a specific type of person appears online to complain—at length—that they were robbed. (Well, maybe this year more than most.) The Origin: A Legacy of Guilt The prize exists because Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, had a crisis of conscience. Nobel held 355 patents, but he was most famous for inventing dynamite. When a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him the " Merchant of Death, " he decided to buy a better legacy. In his 1895 will, he left the bulk of his massive fortune to establish five prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace). Because he was Swedish, he entrusted the selection to Swedish institutions, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The only outlier...
1 comment
Read more