this place where we live

I got back to town as Halloween was winding down. It gets pretty riled up “downtown” for the kids, and then it’s all over by about 8 o’clock. I took a slight detour to see if my old friends were around…I heard they were moving back any day now. No lights on at their place so I headed for home, which took me right by “the store”.

Built in the 1920’s, it’s gone through several owners, and still is a hub for our town. As I rolled by, in the glow of the single light bulb that illuminates its entrance, stood just the couple I’d been searching for. There they were with their 8-month old son and their dog, Ernie. All dressed up for Halloween, their son was a Cheeseburger and Ernie was a Hot Dog. Just inside the store were two more couples, each with their young children. These three families hold a special place in my heart – what a gift to see them all at this moment.

Standing right inside the door like the Store Greeter, another one of the children, a beaming little one a few months shy of two-years-old, was wearing something like coveralls; only they were made to look like a man’s business suit with a dark blue suit, white shirt and red neck tie. Once they put the goofy outfit on her, both her parents laughed out loud and shouted, “Donald Trump!” They gave her the perfect hairdo and a “Trump for President” button and she was the showstopper. The third young one, a 2½-year-old boy with face paint that looked like it’d been through a couple of tearful moments, was wearing a wonderful black velvet cape. Standing there together, we were a part of the Village that we’re becoming.

My friends invited me to wander up the hill with them to go check out “Jack’s Pumpkins” – it’d been several years since they’d been. Jack is a beloved Halloween legend here. He lives in a small, old house that was probably built in the 1930’s. It has a nice, wide, front porch which recently had some work done on it so the porch is back to being mostly level, instead of being a crazy up-and-down “House of Mystery” front porch, which I have to admit, did add to the Halloween effect. It’s only recently that I’ve had any personal interactions with Jack, but I’ve known about “Jack’s Pumpkins” ever since I moved here in 1997.

A couple of weeks before Halloween, pumpkins start showing up on the porch railing – all shapes and sizes. First there are just a couple, but over time, the whole railing is filled with pumpkins and sometimes there are so many that even the railing on the side of the porch gets filled. When I first moved here, I overheard a local telling some visitors who were all having lunch at “the store”, about what went on at Jack’s.

“Yeah, it’s the most important Halloween stop in town: there are all these amazing carved pumpkins, Jack always gives out FULL-SIZE candy bars, shows horror movies on his TV, and, has plenty of whiskey for adults who are game for that sort of thing.” It was all true…mobs of little kids AND adults would flock to Jack’s and the pumpkins were astonishing. Jack carved some of them, and lots of the young and the old joined in to create a magical Halloween every year.

Several years ago, Jack carved one of the most memorable pumpkins, ever. It was the year that the house just up from his place was finished. The lot next door to Jack’s place used to have a couple of big, old evergreen trees that were kind of scruffy. There was one gnarled snag and some brown and withered shrubs; there might have even been a bit of a garbage pile in those trees. It wasn’t a glorious sight…but it was some open space between his house and the house on the next lot.

That sad, empty lot became a HUGE house, with the edge of it built right up to the property line it shared with Jack’s. That enormous place was RIGHT NEXT TO Jack’s little home. The following Halloween, Jack carved a big pumpkin that told the whole story: there was a giant, drooling, Monster House with big, sharp, gnashing teeth, looming over and just about to devour, a tiny and oh-so-terrified little house. Jack carved it and placed it on the side railing, turned it so it faced toward the new mega-house and lit it up with a big candle. That was Jack’s style.

One of my friends spoke with tenderness about Jack this year, saying, “Yeah, Jack’s kind’a gettin’ up there”. Jack’s getting old, just like the rest of us. I saw Jack one day, down at the store. There was a woman with him, clearly not a relative or an acquaintance. She looked pretty uncomfortable – didn’t quite know what to make of Jack, or any of the odd assortment of folks that greeted him. I knew she was some kind of a caregiver. Jack was wearing his standard outfit: a logging shirt, heavy-duty blue jeans with suspenders and well-worn old, black, work boots. Only this day, he’d gotten over-zealous when tucking his shirt into his pants, and instead, his shirt was tucked into his underwear, which were pulled up higher than the waistband of his pants.

“Oh dear,” I thought. I was familiar with this kind of confusion about getting dressed, from the years I spent with my dad toward the end of his life when seemingly simple routines could easily get all mixed up. I said hello to Jack, even though I’m kind of shy and had never really spoken to him directly. I wanted to make sure that even though his life was shifting…needing to have someone help him out…that I, we, still remembered him…still appreciated his role in this town. He lit up when I called out to him, moved toward me and with a big smile, asked how I was doing. The woman that was with him didn’t move, or look toward me – she gave Jack a little bit of privacy in this new territory he was in.

This year when my friends and I walked up the hill to Jack’s house it was pretty quiet up there. Oh, the Jack-O-Lanterns were all still lit, and they were as amazing as always. There was Elvis staring out from the side of one big pumpkin; an image of a wild horse running across the face of another with its mane flying out behind it, and there was a portrait of Jack, with his mischievous, twinkling eyes. But it was quiet now. Jack was inside and all the lights were on. He used to turn all the lights out to make the horror movies even scarier. This time, the TV was tuned to a news program and Jack was sitting right up close to the big, flat-screen TV…maybe so he could hear it, or see it. No one else was there. No candy bars around, no whiskey bottles either, just Jack and the 9 o’clock news.

We toured all the pumpkins and then went inside to say hello. He was happy to see us…but also kind of torn between talking to us and listening to whomever was shouting about something on the news. Finally, one of Jack’s long-time pumpkin carving assistants said, “Hey Jack…want us to blow out the pumpkins for ya?” A little distractedly, Jack said, “yeah, sure, that would be great.” We all said goodnight, went out on the porch and one by one, blew out each candle, loving the work of art one more time. Yep…Jack was “gettin’ up there.”

The next evening I just happened to drive by Jack’s as dusk was falling. There was my friend, the long-time, pumpkin-carving assistant, out on the porch, slowly lighting up each of the pumpkins. Just as on Halloween night, Jack’s front room was all lit up and the TV was hollering out the news. A couple of nights later, well after dark, I drove by Jack’s, and this time another neighbor who lived just a block up from his place, was out on his front porch blowing out one pumpkin and then the next.

That’s the kind of place we live in. We are learning what it means to be a Village. Jack fed us for so many years with his wondrous and scary Halloween house…now we’re lighting the candles for him, and blowing them out each night.

Goodnight Jack. Sleep well. We love you.