This happens every year. No matter how many times (or how loudly) I swear that I’ll never string Christmas lights in the dark again, here I am (again) at the top of a frozen aluminum extension ladder in pitch black. My fingers are so numb that I may as well be wearing boxing gloves, and I’m trying to replace a speck of a fuse on the highest strand of lights that was working an hour ago.

You didn’t know that Christmas lights had fuses? You know the little baggy that comes attached to every strand of lights? You probably have a few hundred of them stashed in a utility drawer in your kitchen along with your rubber band collection, a Monopoly hotel or two, some Canadian change, and at least one dead battery of every conceivable size.

Inside that baggy, you’ll find a couple of replacement fuses. There’s usually two or three extra bulbs in there too, and one of them has a red tip. Beware the red tip.

In nature, red-tipped things usually mean danger. A frog with neon red spots dares you to touch it. The same goes for a baboon’s incandescent nose and ass. The Christmas light equivalent is the red-tipped replacement bulb, which means “I’m going to flash, but not right away. I’ll wait a little while to give you time to lose me in the crowd. And then we’ll all flash together.”

I pry open the little hatch where the fuses are held. Luckily, I remembered to bring a small flat-tipped screwdriver with me because past experience has taught that even though you may get that plastic door to slide open with your fingernail, the fuses aren’t coming out without a pair of tweezers or a stick of dynamite.

Pop in the new fuses, slide the door shut, plug it back in, and… Nothing.

A strand of Christmas lights has about the same life expectancy as a goldfish and will die as unexpectedly. One minute everything seems fine, and the next it’s floating upside down, usually high up in a tree or on the topmost gable of the house.

The limp string of a carcass is unceremoniously tossed onto the heap with the rest of this year’s deceased. No voices call out “I feel fine! I want to go for a walk!”

Back up the ladder, and a new strand of lights blazes to life, completing the twenty-foot-tall triangle. A new giant Christmas tree in our front yard and I’m at the top, its star. I linger in the high, cold night. Snug Harbor below is a vision of electric gingerbread, and I’m reminded of an exclamation made by Charlie Brown as he stood before the gaudy lights and aluminum foliage of the Christmas tree lot. “Fantastic.”

A faint something like sadness or regret strays through the trees, a coyote’s lonesome call. Time, like the wind whipping a flag, seems to tug at my soul. So much time. Not nearly enough. The mourning howl of entropy makes of dreams dust.

But before the vast night can crash down on top of me, a voice calls out. “There’s a cat in the house!”

My soap bubble reverie pops and I’m jolted back to reality. A what in the who now?

As I was saying, this happens every year. But now I have a new saying. When they’re lacking, motivation and encouragement will sometimes come and find you. For example, coyotes don’t usually show up in the middle of the day to hoot and prowl around the tree in which you’re perched. Ice down the back of the spirit to remind me that it gets dark a lot earlier now, so get up and get going!

…
By the way, it was an orange cat. A very stupid orange cat who wandered through the open front door and into camp Collie-Collie-Sheepdog. When I arrived on the scene, Georgie had it cornered in my office.

After Mrs. Spookyblue dragged the dogs out the back door, I managed to throw a towel over the very agitated and animated cat. Or, rather, caught the thing in mid-air as it launched itself through the front window. Well, not really through as much as into. Repeatedly.

Anyway, the orange fur storm eventually got back outside, unharmed. I’m waiting to experience “cat scratch fever”. Wikipedia seems pretty upbeat about it, but I’m sure it’s terminal.

Category: Stuff   Tags: christmas lights

The Johnsons didn’t have any turkey. The children, like a knot of consumer addicts camped out in front of Best Buy three days before Black Friday for no reason other than to get their greasy, greedy mits on “whatever’s on sale” whine, “a fat lot we’ll have to be thankful for.”

But in three minutes, 25 seconds, dad manages to convince them otherwise.

Category: Stuff   Tags: thanksgiving

Some people who think they know me also think that I’m hardcore; that I bleed red-tinted corn syrup and my heart is a pumpkin. The pumpkin part is correct, but I can’t accept the title for most die-hard haunter living at Snug Harbor. That legendary status must go to my beautiful wife.

Were it up to Mrs. Spookyblue, the orange lights, pumpkins, and bats would live the entire year in our front yard and hanging from the rafters. Now, Halloween never really leaves our house, but there comes a time, even on my clock, when I’m ready to turn down the volume on the pumpkin carols. Eat enough lobster and it tastes like soap. That’s the saying, anyway. I wouldn’t eat sea spider for less than $900 cash, in hand, and I only have to take one bite. And if it’s looking up at me then all bets are off. But I still get to keep the cash.

So, once a year, after one of the two major outdoor decorating holidays, there is a stretch of time when a certain battle of wills quietly rages. On one side, a late night shadow moves clandestinely between the yard and the garage, softly crunching dried leaves, intent on thievery. Come sunrise, the other side may or may not notice the slightly reduced zombie population. Or that marginally fewer lights adorn the bushes.

But usually the other side does notice. In fact, the other side usually doesn’t miss a thing. Ever. And if it had actually witnessed the previous night’s pilfering, well … “Perimeter encroachment! Charlie in the trees! Suppression fire on my 12 now!”

Last night I was on such a covert ops mission. It was easily 20 degrees, and I had once again forgotten my gloves. Shivering in the deceivingly warm glow of the last of the Halloween decorations, I spied my objective from behind a huge, glittering, mostly frozen, pile of leaves. The target was the final giant Jack-o-lantern, three strings of lights, and a sad corpse floating in a cauldron of rainwater.

There was no way that I was going to gradually and quietly put these guys away without suffering through perdition, so I didn’t even try. Instead, I had spent the previous hour huddled in front of the electric heater in the garage assembling one of those lighted Christmas mooses. Moosen? Moose. He is splendid.

It was a simple plan. Replace the last of Halloween with the first of Christmas. A risky gambit, but with Thanksgiving just over a week away, my options were limited.

Whether one sees in the moose a bribe or simple gift of affection, this morning I got a big kiss instead of a can of beans to the head. I’ll take that as evidence that a new tradition is born.

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Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Some new gallery updates have arrived …
Halloween Hall
Spooky Hollow – Friendly, Happy

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Alternate title for “Charlie in the trees!”:
Got a moose! Got a moose! Will you do the Fandango?

Category: Halloween, Stuff   Tags: moose

Halloween is 6 days over and Snug Harbor is still festooned with cobwebs. The Grumble still snarls from his tree, and orange lights still glow in the front bushes.

However, in my sloth, I’ve still managed to stack the tombstones on their shelf in the garage, a shelf that won’t bear the burden of next year’s planned expansion. The zombies are back at their posts above the garage door and around the walls, looking very much like unusually garrulous gargoyles. Notre Dame’s rejects.

Some new faces grin over the room at large. Crow, this year’s skeleton-in-a-tree, seems at home hanging by a bungee from a drywall screw. The witch sisters are stacked unceremoniously on a high shelf, for which I’m sure they will make me pay. Brittle arms, once outstretched and reaching, but now sagging, lay folded across flattened paper bosoms. Their musty cloaks are busy with industrious spiders constructing new homes for the winter.

And unlike those spiders, I have been anything but industrious. Just taking a breather. The galleries will get updated. Soon. There are new projects to post. The website’s ongoing renovation is still … ongoing. I’ve just been distracted lately.

I think that possibly I’ve gone and done something rash. Yesterday began chapter one of “The Matter of The Scarecrow Menace”. Want a taste?

On a tall rotten fence post it hung, had always hung. Its cheerless wide-brimmed hat slung low, shading a skeletal face. No crows ever came near, but there were always hornets. A nest humming maliciously somewhere in its dry, paper-filled chest.

It was a menace. You never wanted to see it, but couldn’t help looking. Was it still there? Yes. Always. From its perch in the last field, farther away than any of the boys could run at top speed in under a minute, you could still feel its dead, empty sockets staring. Closing the distance between life and laughter and the sudden realization that no wall blocked its path. No shining knight, leathery cowboy, or hardened marine stood between here and there. And if it suddenly decided to jump off its nail and stalk across the field to the big climbing tree on top of the hill, then — what?

Oh, I’m in trouble.

So, I suppose sloth isn’t really the deadly sin of which I’ve been partaking after all. Possibly wrath. Anyway, if you don’t see many changes around here for a little while, it’s not because I’m neglecting the Autumn Spirit. It’s just that soon everything will be painted gray, and we’ll be the ghosts haunting the cold night.

Go out and fill your soul with sunshine right now, store as much as you can for later. Jump in a pile of leaves. Take a drive into the country and buy a jug of cider from a man with a beard and a friendly dog. Build a little campfire in your front yard and roast something on a stick. Get a bag of those little hard root beer candies shaped like barrels and share them with some kids. Spend a whole day well so that when you close the door for the night and sit down to supper, your clothes smell like leaves and your warm, soft bed is so inviting that you never once consider turning on the TV.

November can be glad, too.

Category: Stuff   Tags: november, short story