Happy Halloween ya'll

I was in the fourth grade, on the school bus, heading home. Birdie Hensley, a fellow classmate, was looking at a monster movie magazine in the seat beside me. I tried hard not to look. Sort of like driving past a horrible car crash. You know you don't want to see but you can't not look. I guess she noticed my reluctance and kept shoving the magazine toward me. She finally said "You're afraid to look!" Yes, she nailed the truth on the head but I said "I'm not afraid, I'm just not that interested in monsters." And so she set that monster magazine right in my lap. I sat petrified - as if the very paper this stuff was printed on was eating the flesh from my legs!

There was the wolf man who I always thought was a dumb idea for a horror figure. A guy changing into a wild dog...please. And same goes for vampires. A man changing into a bat? Vampires suck! Two colossal mistakes for monsters. I'm just not a fan of the changing forms concept for horror....which I guess is basically the whole premise behind horror. And, oh yeah, that creature from the black lagoon. He just looks like a guy in a rubber suit to me. Yet, all those guys gave me (4th grade Sarah) the creeps! But the creepiest one of all was the mummy. Something about that character, coming back from the dead and all. And me growing up in the south -confused about religion and knowing that coming back from the dead was, according to a lot of reliable adults that I knew, possible. Of course this was all before I understood the concept of spiritual versus physical death. The idea of walking mummies scared me!

So that afternoon after the fateful bus ride, I was walking back from feeding the pigs in the back holler. Suddenly I got that weird feeling one gets when they think someone is watching them. I kept looking over my shoulder, with flashbacks to that magazine in my lap, and walking a little faster. I was so sure that I had seen something. Was it a mummy? Wasn't there something white back there? Was that a sound? Like a moan? Was it a mummy moan?

I ran to the house as fast as I could. Mom was there and she could fend off any of those ugly creeps! I felt better just being around her.

Anyways, I lay in bed the other night thinking about that day. Why did those stupid books trigger such fear in me? My rational mind knew they were just actors in costumes but that irrational mind of mine forgot all that and ran with the fear.Why?

As I lay there in the dark thinking "why" something else occurred to me. The vampire could turn into a bat and fly to any known spot. And the werewolf could run as fast as a wolf, so he could get about pretty fast too. Yet the mummy would take a step and (long pause) take another step. Take a step (long pause) take another step. On and on. I could have walked quickly from the pig pen to the wood shed, sat down, knit an afghan for my grandmother, finished off my Christmas card list and then walked over the back porch to compose a 3 act opera. Mummy would just be getting over the rise of the hill. Mummies move slow. I guess it's the being dead a long time that slows 'em down. And in the movies, these guys are actually catching flesh and blood people. How slow does one healthy human being have to be to get caught by a mummy?

I lay in bed laughing about this! Then it occurred to me that maybe that mummy from my childhood is still after me. Maybe he has been walking that one step, (long pause) another step (long pause) for over 45 years and several states. Maybe as I am laying here in bed having a good laugh about dumb, slow mummies, he has made it all the way from North Carolina - because mummies never quit and he is right at my window right now. And for an instant, I could have sworn that I heard something..............

Hang Ten - again

Hello Blog Fans! Well here we are at the top of the stairway. For the longest time, I contemplated just how to get up high enough to finish off the ceilings at the top of the stairs. As fate would have it, when the need became necessary, a way to do it developed. Let me bring you up to date on the Nichol Street Experience (my art project for 2009), all the upstairs rooms are ready to paint. I will be doing a final check before the painting begins but right now, that part is ready. The entire stairwell will be ready to paint in two more working days. I framed in the back door and cleaned up the wall around the door. I learned that I am not good at installing panelling. This is OK news to me because I've got enough to do. I had planned to put panelling over the rough wall around the back door area but it just wasn't working. Trust me, when I get finished with the house I will do a before and after blog feature. Anyway, Barnaby has been coming by to help me with some of the work. One day he went to Taco Bell for lunch. When he returned and saw me up on the ladder in the stairwell he almost lost it! "Mom, what are you doing?" I explained that the ladder isn't going anywhere and that I just think of surfing videos. He says "They land in water."

There's a party going on round here...

As most of you may already know, I have been working on fixing up a rental house in Anderson. About 3 weeks ago, I arrived to find tiny foot prints in the spackling dust all over the house. You cannot imagine the bolt of terror that went through me when I saw these little tracks. My imagination had a hideous, huge creature jumping on my head and ripping my eyes out! So I slowly made my way through the house looking behind every door and around every corner. I went down in the basement thinking about those horror movies where people are going into the basement and you're thinking "Don't go down in the basement!" I looked everywhere for an opening that a creature could come into the house. I spotted an open flue that emptied into the massive chimney. I figured the varmint must have come in that way. I stuffed a huge chunk of insulation into the opening! When I got back to the Lincoln building, I googled 'animal tracks' and came up with squirrel. Time went by and no more tracks....until Monday of this week. I arrived at Nichol to find squirrel tracks all through the dust like some kind of wild party had taken place. A trash bucket was turned over. Not only were there tracks on the floor, there were tracks on the step ladder, on the stair rail, tracks on the commode and tracks on the wall where a cord comes into the room from the satelite dish. I think the squirrel was pulling the cord for some reason. I decided to go back to the basement and check the flue opening. Before I went down the steps, I opened the back door to let more light into the stairwell. I heard a chattering outside the door. The squirrel was sitting in a tree making a noise that sounded a lot like laughter. The insulation was missing from the flue opening. Now the flue opening has a flue stopper in place and hopefully the crazy parties have stopped.