Hayrides Around Moline

On Halloween, take your pocketknife and notch the rims of a large wooden thread-spool. Wrap a long string around it. Insert a big nail in the spool hole for an axle. Press the spool against a house’s window or siding and pull the string. Makes a loud and awful racket. In junior and senior high I designed and painted Halloween designs on storefront windows every year. My most memorable effort was a satire on going to the airport to watch the “motorboat races,” which was junior high code for going to the airport to park and make out. I think I painted monsters racing the motorboats. I feared real punishment if any authority figured out the symbolism. But no adult ever figured it out. In fact, it was so subtle no one ever figured it out, except me. One year, someone put watermelon rinds in the Peterson’s chimney because they did not give out treats. They turned off the lights and pretended they weren’t home. We always thought Ray Rohrer or Butch Hannah did it. We heard stories about people heating up pennies before giving them to the kids, and of others greasing their steps with butter so the kids would slip and fall, or of old crabs bringing out a big pan of soapsuds pretending it was popcorn and then throwing it on the trick-or-treaters. Probably all urban myths. I never turned over an outhouse myself, but I don’t know if Bob ever did. Seems like he was always in some kind of trouble, though. I do know he really liked to play with matches. I never went on a hayride because I was too young to have a girlfriend to take. Iris went on many, though. They died out in popularity as horses disappeared from the small farms around Moline. When I was about seven, Iris dressed me up as a girl and took me to a church Halloween party. I remember bobbing for apples and getting water up my nose. Not one person guessed I was a boy because she did such a good job with my spit curls and introduced me as “Daisy Guild.” At least, I think that was the reason.