Long, Long Ago

What amazes me to no end is how houseflies can sleep clinging upside-down to the ceiling, and Halloween.

And you should realize that this week’s literary adventure isn’t going to be about houseflies.  Rather, it is about Halloween.

Halloween is a minor holiday that can be interpreted as either religious or secular.  It is believed to be a celebration about the dead on the eve of the Christian day, All Hallows Eve.

It is also interpreted by non-Christians as being a celebration by Druids, which began in old world Great Britain.

No one is quite sure, but we celebrate this last day in October, nonetheless.

And we do so by carving pumpkins into Jack-o’-Lanterns, dressing as alter egos, and exchanging treats in lieu of tricks.

All this activity begins with extreme enthusiasm because little kids get to dress up as so many different things.  Some of these costumes are store bought, while others are hand-made by creative, crafty parents.

It doesn’t matter because it is often as big a deal and exciting for the parents as for the kids.

My formative years were spent in a northeast industrial city.  Those words should give you an idea of our average October 31^st.  Cold with a good chance of snow was the normal forecast from roughly early October until May.

It didn’t really matter what your costume was or what it looked like, it was usually hidden by a warm, hooded parka.

Smokey the Cat's buddies trick-or-treating

Still, my earliest recollection of Halloween was me dressed as a bear cub.  This store-bought costume was made of highly flammable Nylon and finished-off with a hard plastic mask that was held in place with an elastic band.

The costume caused profuse sweating, while the mask succeeded in limiting your vision to near zero, and crushing all your facial features.  Talk about waterboarding…

My Grandmother, Mother, and Father, all oohed and aahed as I was crying and whimpering.  It was awful.

Awful, until I was led from house-to-house by my tiny hand and given goodies, that is.

I was careful to use the word “goodies” instead of candy.  Our neighborhood was flush with widows who were likely living on meager earnings.  In any case, they didn’t hand out candy like other homes did because it was pretty expensive.

After ringing the doorbell, we, as a group of neighborhood friends, would step back to shout, “Trick or Treat!” with gusto.

Apples were proudly turned into candied apples on sticks, by Mrs. Jones.  Mrs. Kaiser gave out popcorn balls, and Mrs. Beblowski tossed a concoction of pretzels and melted chocolate into our trick-or-treat bags.

None of us could see what, in the form of loot, was being deposited, though.  So, after the door was closed with a genuine smile, we would turn, lift our masks, and try to decipher what we had just scored.  Then it was off to the next house with an illuminated porch light.

And then, just as today, Halloween is one of those really iffy events.  No one knows how many kids are going to show up to extort for swag.

One year we it would be 30, the next year 10, another year 50.  So getting enough treats was difficult to anticipate.  Kids grew up, some would rather attend church parties, and some were remanded to serve jail time.  But I digress.

It was those years when the homeowners failed to anticipate well.  We knew because we found loose change, sticks of chewing gum, and pencils in our bags.

Today, trick-or-treaters show up wearing street clothes and sporting beards – real beards, that is.  Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who is wearing a costume, period.  Some parents look as though they are costumed as trollops when they are not.  Alas.

Still, it didn’t matter.  We had fun traipsing about the neighborhood, all dressed in different costumes, but still looking like a tribe of Michelin Men in our toasty parkas.

In any event, have a safe and enjoyable Halloween!

Pumpkin Loophole

It’s been over ten-years since EasternShoreFishAndGame.com began, and after all those years we are still proudly providing weekly stories that are gluten-free.

Which leads me to today’s story.

Halloween is quickly approaching; we know not because of any calendar, but because Christmas decorations are springing up in all the major retailers’ stores.

Everything is coming up pumpkin, too.

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting pumpkin beer, pumpkin latte, pumpkin bathroom spray, pumpkin automobile air fresheners, pumpkin cookies, and even pumpkin pie filling.

Most politicians are lawyers, and not very good lawyers.  That being said, how competent do you think they are to serve as a governmental representative for you?

If you’re reading this stoned, now is not the time to get ahead of me.

Every year for Halloween I buy a pumpkin out of which I fashion a Jack-o’-Lantern that usually resembles a train wreck victim, not by choice.

While I possess many skills, carving wood, soap, stone, or pumpkins, is not one of them.

Pretty regularly I receive comments from trick-or-treater’s parents shaming me for leaving hideous gourds out for small, impressionable children to see.  A few others thank me for creating pumpkin parodies; of course, they were not intended as such.  Alas.

In any case, I went to buy my blank pumpkin canvass for this year’s messterpeice.  I carefully studied each of the 271 pumpkins for the idea size, shape, and weight.

I could envision something spectacular – along the lines of the statue of David.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find a pumpkin that large.

So it was a scary face with squinty eyes and large teeth, but nothing several glasses of fermented beverages couldn’t readjust your eyes to enhance its intended beauty.  But I digress.

It was the quest for that prefect gourd that made me think of those greedy politicians.

More often than not, that hand in my pocket belongs to a local, state, or federal politician, searching around for my money to fund their new project that will benefit everyone except me.

The pregnant pumpkin store cashier asked me if I was going to eat this pumpkin or carve it.

Example of my Nancy Pelosi masterpeice

I immediately thought word had gotten out about my poor knife skills, and perhaps the community-at-large was attempting to institute a “Save the Pumpkins” program.

No, this nosy cashier needed this information in order to determine if tax needed to be collected.

After my head stopped spinning atop my neck, I asked her about this new-to-me overstepping of the government.

I was truly surprised that the store had to collect sales tax if this innocent produce item was used for anything other than food; that “anything” included carving.

It seems as though those thoughtful politicians, who often carp about loopholes in the law, luckily found a way to summarily plug these 8¢ from skating past the local coffers.

This suddenly makes the self-checkout line more attractive to me.

But now we know how these slimy politicians keep getting elected and re-elected to introduce their brilliant plans to extract more money from their constituents. It must be the gluten.

Mission Accomplished

Democratic Party playbook

Way back in 1949, George Orwell wrote a novel “1984.”  It described life in a future dictatorship where mere words were bastardized into twisted slogans.

“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength,” was a memorable one that likely went over the heads-of-mush reading it in high school.

When I read it in 1969, it was time-wasting nonsense.  Fast forward fifty-years to 2019, and it is clear this novel has been turned into a user manual for political society.

Presidential candidates, who are not only narcissistic, but also deluded by their mental abilities, have been touring the country in an attempt to connect with potential voters.  And part of that connection effort includes opening their mouths.

The bad part for them is some Americans own calculators and some own recording devices.

Regularly spouting off are candidates such as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren, all of whom have been in political office of one form or another for years; in Senator Biden’s, Senator Warren’s, and Senator Sanders’ cases, they have been riding the guvment gravy train for decades.

Throughout those 40-years, or so, the Four Horses Butts of the Apocalypse have had the opportunity to enact or veto many, many bills affecting all of America.  They didn’t.

Senator Sanders served as the Chair of the Armed Forces Services Committee – the Committee that oversees the Veteran’s Administration.  He didn’t handle that issue when he was in a prime position to do so, alas.  Now he wants to be elected President so that he is able to effect change.  I’d say it’s too little, too late.  Forty years too late.

Senator Warren has been on the election trail complaining about big banks taking money from their borrowers and taxpayers, alike.  She claims it’s unfair to target people who are unable to afford a house, over an apartment, just because they can’t repay mortgage loans or taxes, or both.  Her solution to rectify this injustice is to make other tax payers buy homes for the deadbeats, and give them a $1000 per month stipend.  Brilliant.

Then there is Senator Biden who also feels he knows what American voters want: lame lies that are converted into stories by him.  He can’t remember when he served as Vice President, how he told people to illegally use firearms, and that he was a ‘touchy-feely’ kind of guy, hence the reason he can’t keep his hands off of constituents.

Now “Lunchbox Joe” is trying to keep from drowning in graft and corruption accusations being levied against both he and his son.  Unfortunately, neither can agree on an alibi.

Lastly, Senator Harris, who served as a state attorney general, prosecuted drug cases with aplomb, exercising little restraint or mercy.  Unfortunately, she was caught on videotape bragging about how she, too, broke controlled substance laws herself; in an effort to appear more hip than the wooden spoon she’s impersonating, she giggled while lying about the time-frame involved.  Oh, my.

But on a positive note, all four of these self-centered phonies want to really rub everyone’s noses in the guvment poop on the carpet, including yours.

They feel illegal aliens – criminals who are trespassing on America’s sovereign soil – deserve some bonus for simply breaking our laws.  These miscreants would be eligible to receive free health insurance.

That’s the same free health insurance President Obama forced you to buy at premium prices, with attached astronomical deductibles.   Free to the criminals, though!

Not to be outdone, the Four Horses Butts of the Apocalypse promise to guarantee free college educations to not only illegal aliens, but also they will forgive any and all debt for the kids who would like to attend institutions of higher education.

As a bonus, all of this brain trust would sell their souls – if they had one – to confiscate your Constitutionally protected firearms.  They may be lawyers, but not good ones.

This is terrific news.  But the terrific news only applies to the unstructured, unlawful, and uncaring, which enjoy taking, taking, and taking.

In pre-school, American kids were given free lunches, out of compassion.  In kindergarten, they got free cookies and milk.  In elementary school, they got free breakfast, lunch, and afterschool snacks.  They went to high school and received free lunches, free extracurricular activities and team uniforms and instruments.

Now those kids and their families expect free college tuition, books, and accommodations.  And why not?  They have been trained to expect free stuff for nearly two decades.

George Orwell got it right.

It’s Easy Being Green

Muppet, Kermit the Frog, sang the song, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”  He was wrong.

Of course, he was talking about his “frog” existence; I’m speaking about the environment.

Today’s young pukes genuinely believe they own the market on ideas.  They don’t.

Practically daily, we hear about awareness of the environment and protecting it.  Evidently, these intellectual youngsters have one thing on which they can rely: OPT, or other people’s thoughts.

I believe that in school, these non-thinkers are taught just that – non thinking.

Allow me to explain.

Anything offered to these brains of mush will stick, much like wet pasta laden with plenty of starch.  Throw stuff at a wall and it becomes gospel.

Recycling bottles and cans, using less electricity, keeping plastics out of dumps, using cloth washrags and napkins, and avoiding paper plates, are just a few brilliant changes Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Zers are pushing as original ideas.

Of course, these are ideas their parents have foisted upon us as a society for some decades now.  Now it’s the turn of their progeny.  Alas.

I was in kindergarten when there were forty-eight states in America.  For all you New Jersyites, there are now fifty.  I am old enough to remember when the Dead Sea was just sick.  That’s pretty old.

Back then, my Father would load up empty beer and soda bottles into the family sedan in order to return them to the store.  There, they were exchanged for several cents each, with that money applied to the purchase of new cases of beverages.  Pint bottles got you 2¢ each, while quarts garnered 5¢ per bottle.  That’s incentive to recycle.

Beer and soda manufacturers met the demand of consumers to not make returning anything mandatory.  They created bottles with twist-off caps, and aluminum cans to replace returnable bottles.

Paper napkins quickly disappeared because of the inconvenience of washing out linen napkins, as did dish washing rags; they gave way to paper towels for handiness.

Being berated for using too much in the way of fossil fuels, the new-thinking kiddies insist we drive electric cars, use curly-q light bulbs, and sit in the dark to conserve energy.

My Mother used a clothesline – now called a solar energy dryer – for our laundry.  We didn’t own a dryer, only a wringer.  Look it up.

As an infant, I was clad in a diaper.  However, it was a cloth diaper.  They were washed out, then laundered, and hung our on the solar energy dryer.  Wealthier neighbors used diaper services that came by to pick up and sanitize their diapers.  But I digress.

The way milk arrived at your home in days of yore

Milk was delivered in glass bottles that were rinsed out and returned, when empty.  They were picked up and delivered by milkmen, every few days, along with eggs, butter, cream, and whatever other dairy good you desired.

That effort kept countless one-passenger cars off the roads, thereby saving gas and preventing pollution.

Baked goods and seafood were also delivered to your door.  A fellow even came by to sharpen your kitchen knives for a pittance; as a bonus, he could repair your umbrellas, if you so desired.

In other words, we oldsters were practicing a green existence for generations.  Suddenly, “progress” happened.

Now, Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Zers are reinventing the wheel through OPTs.

If anything, they learned something in school – plagiarism.

Good job!