Happy Halloween!

We had a few trick-or-treaters today. The littlest ones are the cutest: tiny ladybug Ella from across the street, a pair of petite princesses who said "canny!" when I asked "what do you say?", and the very cutest, 6 week old Haley Jo all dressed up as a sleeping dalmatian. I'm making the supreme sacrifice to eat all the leftover orange Tootsie Roll Pops, not all at once, I'll be spreading them out over the next weeks, or few days.

October 31--Edward Docker, Making Lanterns. This time of year I always think of Granddad sitting in his chair by the kitchen door. He'd have tipped his coffee into his saucer so it would cool faster and he'd pick it up to slurp it from the saucer. We'd be kneeling on chairs with our sleeves rolled up, scooping the seeds and stringy slime out of the pumpkins we'd gone out to get with Uncle Walt. he'd get out the wheelbarrow with the iron wheel and push it out along the path where he'd park it facing back home and he would turn us loose ("on your mark, get set, go!") to run up the rows trying to get the perfect pumpkin. Once each of us had chosen one and put it in the wheelbarrow, he'd grunt and complain as if we had each put an anvil in, but he carried them up the steps into the kitchen for us after rinsing off the dirt with the hose. Grandma had a special knife with a broken tip that she used to cut the lids so that we could reach down in the cold and disgusting inside to scrap out the stringy innards with a spoon. We scoop and complain and giggle, slopping the seed and "punkin guts" onto the thick layer of newspapers Grandma had covered the table with. Once all the pumpkins were cleaned we each got a crayon to draw the faces that Granddad and Uncle Walt carved for us since Grandma said we were too little for sharp knives. She would be gathering up all the seeds for salting and roasting while each of us supervised the carving of our jack-o-lanterns with all the concentration of a Michelangelo, while Granddad told us how lucky we were, that he and his brothers had to carve turnips when they were small. Turnips! That's how poor they were, he said. We thought it was just a joke.

It was nice to go back and visit that warm kitchen even if most of this is pure fiction. The people were real, are real since Uncle Walt's still alive and kicking in Indy, and it's nice to see them again and hear their voices.
--Barbara