10/31/13 – DATELINE
HALLOWEEN – MOTHER NATURE TRICKS TREATERS! I begin this report on the afternoon
of Halloween. When I got up this morning, I turned on the Weather Channel, as I
often do, and I was confronted with the red screen of death: a Meteorological
Alert for Burks Falls and surrounding area, warning of heavy rain and damaging
winds. My big boat is out of the water, and our dock is finally up, but my
folding boat was still pulled up on the shore. I scurried down to the lake
before the heavy rain started, flipped the little boat over and put the motor
in the shed. I’m not ready to admit boating season is over just yet, and I have
yet to winterize the motor, but I might as well batten down the hatches in the
meantime. When I lived in Buffalo, I used to moor my big boat in Lake Erie off
our Canadian summer home near Crystal Beach. Almost like clockwork, the weather
would turn around mid-September and it was wise to be out of the open lake by
then. I tried to stretch the season a couple of times, only to endure a few
sleepless nights watching the wind-driven waves toss my boat around like a bar
of Ivory soap on the open seas. You don’t want to mess with Lake Erie when the
wind kicks up. I once watched my vintage 1957 Chris Craft drag its mooring (a cement-filled
truck tire with 100’ of chain for scope), 200 yards during a bad storm. I
finally went out in the middle of the storm and secured it with two Danforth
anchors off the bow to keep it from beaching. It came to rest about 10’ from a
neighbor’s steel boat lift, with about five inches of clearance between the bottom
of the propeller and the lake bottom. That was close. Up here in the Great
White North we get some heavy wind, but with a secure dock, snubbers, bumpers,
and dock whips, I don’t worry about my boat in a storm.
Every year
when Halloween rolls around, I quietly pine for the days when it meant more to
me. At the checkout counter in the local supermarket, all the cashiers were in
costume for Halloween, and it made me a little nostalgic. I always had a costume for Halloween. My self-made tuna costume was
legendary, and if I do say so myself, my dead lawyer was pretty good too. One
year I dressed as Abe Lincoln after he was shot. That one was somewhat
derivative in that it was a little like the dead lawyer, but with more blood, a
beard, a hole in my head, and a bow tie instead of a necktie. I have always
been a Halloween purist, and believe that creativity is an important part of
the gig. Anyone can go out and buy or rent a Lady Gaga costume, and if I had a
dollar for every Chewbacca suit I’ve seen, I’d be a rich man. How many tuna
fish costumes do you come across? Sometimes the concept is more important than
the actual costume. Once, my buddy Bob dressed up as the Pope, put a noose
around his neck, and billed his costume as “Pope on a Rope.” One girlfriend I
knew came to our Halloween party dressed as a whale stuck in a block of ice.
She cut a big hole in a sheet of Styrofoam for ice. Genius! Another friend
filled up a clear trash bag with dead leaves, made a giant “Salada” sign, taped
some cloths line to it and to herself and came as a giant tea bag. Sadly,
Halloween is becoming a big retail money maker, and therein lies the death of
creativity. Come September, even the dollar store is a sea of orange and black
plastic and crepe. I read somewhere that Halloween greeting cards are now very
popular. I think it is sacrilege to buy a tube of fake blood and some fake
fangs and “phone in” your costume. Go big or go home.
These days,
the part I like best about Halloween is the scary movies. I can catch up on all
the horror flicks I have not yet seen, or have not seen in a long time. Just watched
or recorded The Ring, Sinister Movie,
Evil Dead, Hostel (yikes!), and several others. One thing I can say about
today’s scary movies – they don’t leave much to the imagination. Still, I think
guys like Lugosi, Cheney, and Price had a corner on the creepy market. One
final note about Halloween. I realize that, in this increasingly dangerous
world, parents must be vigilant in protecting their young kids from malevolent treat-givers,
but I saw something on the news the other night that made me bristle. Instead
of treats, one woman in Toronto was handing out letters to the parents of
overweight children reprimanding them for allowing their kids to eat candy. There’s
one in every crowd! While child obesity is a growing problem in some parts of
the world, come on lady, do you need to spoil Halloween? Pelt that self-righteous
baby-on-boarder with candy korn and give her thirty lashes with shoestring
licorice. Save your buzz kill for Christmas like the rest of us!
11/4/13 The
storm has passed, and now it’s just very cold (25F last night). We had some
trees down on the property and were without power for a few hours, but had no
major damage. I hate to admit it, but perhaps boating season is over. Time to
dust off my elf costume.
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Written
by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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