30 October 2015
Hi Everyone:
Supposen the witches began to witch and you couldn't tell which witch was which. Well, supposen?
According to my calendar, tomorrow is Halloween, and this year it is on a Saturday, which means that the school aged kids in our neighborhood will not be in school, so maybe they will be out in force. We never know from year to year how many will show up at our door to receive a treat. My kind-hearted wife usually buys several bags of candy (that she hides from me) until the holiday arrives. This year is different, instead of candy (dog gone it!) she bought forty bottles of fruit-punch with straws. (She didn't bother to hide it from me) I guess I'll have to go trick or treating tomorrow night.
Here is a short story that I wrote some time ago:
TRICK OR TREAT
(For Carolyn)
By
Joshua J. Truxton
509 Words
My daddy is a
smart man. He makes all kinds of things. He made my toy box, and my bed; he
even made the home we live in. Our house
is made of big logs. It’s near an airbase in Alaska. It’s beautiful in the summer. The days are
warm and the sun is still up when I go to sleep, but in the winter the sun
comes up half way between breakfast and lunch, and it’s dark again by the time
we have dinner.
In winter, the
snow piles up so high that neither Mommy or I can see over it, and it’s so cold
that Daddy runs an electric cord from our house to a heater he puts over the
motor of our truck to keep it from freezing. Mommy says he’s a genius—a mad
genius—whatever that is.
Late
last spring, I found a little puppy out in the woods behind our house. She had
lots of soft brown fur. Mommy said I could keep her if nobody claimed her.
Mommy wanted to name her Georgia, but Daddy named her George.
I
don’t think Daddy liked George. Every time she peed on the floor, he picked her
up by the back of her neck, which Daddy said didn’t hurt, and threw her out the
door.
I
don’t think George liked Daddy either ‘cause once after he threw her out, I saw
her pee on the mat in front of our door. When she finished, she shook herself
and ran away. I never saw her again.
Like I said, it
gets cold in Alaska and the morning after George left, Daddy put on his heavy
jacket, stepped out the door, and slipped on the icy mat. He hurt his back.
There
are a lot of kids in our neighborhood. Most of them are older than me. Daddy
says they’re a bunch of troublemakers, always up to nasty tricks, especially at
Halloween. This year, he said that when they holler, “Trick or treat,” he’s
going to give them a trick they’ll never forget. I watched as he fastened some
long wires to the inside knob on our front door, and then attached the other
end to a little machine he has that looks like my pencil sharpener. Daddy said
that when he turns the handle real fast they’ll get a shocking trick. Just to
be sure, he went outside to shovel some snow on the mat that Mommy had just
swept clean.
When
he went outside, I remembered Daddy saying, “It’s so easy, a child can do it,”
so I went over to the table where he had that pencil sharpener and gave it a
couple of real fast turns—it was easy. You should have heard Daddy yell! I
don’t know what all the words meant; they must have been bad ones because Mommy
rushed in and put her hands over my ears.
We
gave out popcorn balls and lollypops on Halloween.
