Originally Posted Friday, November 1, 2013
Still dragging from the flu and paranoid now about other disasters that might be awaiting me, I decided NOT to start back at the gym on Halloween. It seemed a misguided idea at best. Worn with illness and worry but happy nonetheless, I decided to pick up a few bags of candy and to sit out on my porch with a glass of Hendrix gin. I'd be there for the little goblins when they came.
They didn't.
A friend, did, however, and we sat out in the dying light reminiscing about old trips to distant lands, in particular our trip to climb the volcano Popocatapetl when Mexico was still a beautiful and welcoming place for gringos, long before the drug cartels had muscled in. I little money went a very long way in Mexico back then, or, as we preferred, would let you live above your station for a good while. I had been and my friends had not, so it was my "expertise" and bad Spanish that got us through. Good times.
As we talked and refilled our glasses, and as the purple dusk began to fade. . . not a kid in costume showed up. When I first moved into this neighborhood (a good spooky one, I think, with lots of oak trees filled with hanging moss, winding, narrow roads and houses built so long ago that they might be haunted), the streets were filled for hours. People drove their kids to the neighborhood to trick or treat because it was safe (and because you got better candy, too). There is none of that, now.
Oh well, the horse and buggy are gone, too, and nobody misses them. And I've always hated dressing up in costumes, even the one that I wear to work. It is just too much trouble, I think. I am a lazy southern boy who hates to put on shoes, sitting barefoot on the porch sipping a big glass of gin.
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