The old guy in the parlor
Snug Harbor is a real place, and not that hard to locate. You’ll find it on city streets where corn shocks rustle in store windows. In neighborhoods where jack-o-lanterns and orange, yellow, and purple mums line driveways, where bed-sheet-ghosts hang flapping from lamp posts. In kitchens and on front porch swings where neighbors visit over coffee.
It is where people gather to share friendship, warmth, stories. Friend of SpookyBlue Robert Holland writes of Snug Harbor…
My mother-in-law loves to give out candy at Halloween, so each year we bundled her up and set her on the porch in a comfortable chair, like a live prop. And that old woman scared the devil out of a lot of our visitors, sitting in a darkened corner of the patio.
This year she’s suffered a third stroke, and it would be cruel to sit her outside. So we decided to open our front doors and put the ol’ gal in the parlor. Kids will have to venture inside a few feet to get the goods. And of course the entry is fully decorated (flicker lights in the chandelier, creepy pix in the electronic photo frame, and various lamps with altogether too-little wattage).
And, of course, a booming, raging thunderstorm outside…
The thing is, I’m not around much for the haunting. I’m usually out traipsing the neighborhood with my daughter. Ah, but soon she will be too old to go door-to-door, and I’ll be the old guy in the parlor. The future looks bright as a 25-watt bulb, and for Halloween, that’s ideal.
We couldn’t agree more, Robert.
Do you have a Snug Harbor story to share?