Some Scary Halloween Thoughts

Across the Fence #519

Somewhere out there in the darkness of the night, ghosts, goblins, and other scary creatures are on a pre-sugar high in anticipation of Halloween. It’s almost here.

Wind and rain have stripped the leaves from most of the trees and they look as bare as the bones of a roadkill raccoon after the turkey buzzards have finished a Halloween feast. Their branches sway in the breeze like bony fingers reaching out to grab you as you pass by. Their branches click and groan against each other, creating eerie sounds in the darkness. The wind blowing through the dry corn creates a rattle that sounds like an army of unseen skeletons shuffling through the cornfield. Maybe it’s not the sound of branches and corn stalks. Maybe there are skeletons out there in the dark. The Hunter’s Moon, appearing from behind a bank of dark clouds, casts ominous Halloween shadows over the countryside. It all adds to the mystery and spookiness of a wonderful Halloween experience. Try not to be too scared when you venture out among all the frightening creatures that emerge during Halloween.

It would be a great night for the old Prairie Ghosts to ride together again and go in search of the elusive Gamle Magretta. She only returns on Halloween, the night she was mysteriously burned to death in an old, abandoned building where she had sought shelter. I’ve mentioned Gamle Magretta (Old Margaret) in other Halloween stories and I’m still waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Perhaps this will be the year.

Yes, Halloween is a scary time. Kids will be running around on sugar highs for days to come as the rest of us prepare to head for the poles and elect the politicians who will represent us for the next few years. The scary part is that only around 50% of eligible voters will vote. It’s not only scary, it’s a shame. I will exercise my right to vote, otherwise I have no right to complain if I don’t like how things are being run. I’ve got to admit, I’ll be very glad when the election is over and we can bury all the negative ads along with the ghosts of Halloween.

Lets move on to a lighter subject. On our recent trip to Spring Grove, Minnesota to talk to the Sons of Norway Book Club, we also visited the Giants of the Earth Heritage Center and met with Dr. John Storlie, Genetic Genealogist at the Center. He also teaches Microbiology and Genetics at Viterbo University in La Crosse.

I’ve been involved with genealogy and family history for many years and have always wanted to have my DNA tested and see what it has to say about my ancestry. I took the test and received the results last week. There’s so much information involved, and now we’re going back to the Center where Dr. Storlie will explain the details to me. There are many interesting results. If any of you have taken the test, you know what I mean. They even warn you ahead of time, you may find out things you didn’t expect. Finding out all this information right before Halloween could really be scary for some people. I found the results extremely interesting, because I’m always looking for answers and like to keep an open mind to new possibilities. 

One result was very interesting, at least to me. I have 2.6% Neanderthal DNA! Note to my brothers and sister, welcome to the 2.6% Neanderthal Club. If you know history, you know the Neanderthal race disappeared about 40,000 years ago. Dr. Storlie told me when I took the test that I would most likely have Neanderthal DNA because of my heavy Norwegian/Scandinavian ancestry. He was right. I don’t find that scary at all, I find it fascinating.

Dr. John Storlie, explains Howard's DNA test results.

Howard wonders why he didn't inherit a full head of hair!

Many people had parents or grandparents who all came from Norway, and refer to themselves as 100% Norwegian. All my grandparents or great grandparents came from Norway, so I always felt that way too, until I started studying genealogy and history. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but our Viking ancestors really got around. They traveled to about every part of the known world at that time, and found some new worlds too, including North America, where they met the Skraelings (Native Americans). In most cases, they brought captives back to Norway.

According to my DNA, I’m 79.8% Scandinavian. That includes Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish. Other DNA includes British, Irish, Scottish, French and German. That stands to reason since our Viking ancestors “visited” those countries many times. I also have Greek and Italian from my ancestors who sailed to the Mediterranean to take part in the 5th Crusade. They also brought back captives. There’s a small percentage of East Asian Yakut from Siberia. So I’m a bit of a mutt when it comes to my DNA. I also share DNA from my mother’s side with some famous historical figures, including St. Luke.

Now if all that isn’t enough to scare the hair off a Neanderthal during Halloween, I don’t know what is.  

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Pumpkins, Corn Shocks, and Outhouses

Across the Fence 3518

As Halloween draws near, I can’t help but think of pumpkins, corn shocks, and outhouses. I know candy treats are high on the list of kids these days when they think of Halloween, but it was hardly on the radar when I was young. We didn’t go trick or treating. If you lived in the country there wasn’t much treating going on, but there were a lot of tricksters roaming the dark countryside.

I don’t remember carving pumpkins when I was young, but I carved a bunch of them when our kids were young. On Halloween we put them on the front porch and lit them when it got dark. Too often, there was a cold rain and wind when the kids went trick or treating. It just wasn’t the same when Erik and Amy had to wear winter coats or rain gear over their costumes. It seems like we had more than our share of those types of Halloweens. The Jack-o-lanterns didn’t stay lit very long in that type of weather.

One year I bought a book with fancy patterns you could cut into a pumpkin. I did several of them that year. They looked great. One was a wolf howling at the moon. I made the mistake of setting them on the porch the day before Halloween. The next morning the pumpkins were still there, but the designs were completely gone and only gaping holes in the pumpkins remained. I figured it must have been the neighborhood raccoons who had a nice feast of fresh pumpkin. Raccoons lived in the sewers when we lived in Madison. Every evening they emerged from the sewer drain in the curb along our front yard, and went in search of food. We also had a multitude of squirrels, so they may have joined in the pumpkin feast too.

I didn’t want to buy a bunch of new pumpkins so we put a light in the ones we had and they looked like mutilated pumpkins with large holes in their heads. They received a lot of questions and comments from parents accompanying their trick or treaters.

Pumpkin carving: Amy and Erik helping me.

Halloween was a bigger deal when our kids were young than it was when I was their age. It was nice to finally experience Halloween along with them. Now our grandson, Sean, will soon start trick or treating. He wants to be a robot at Day Care this year. Halloween’s an exciting time for kids. Now Tim and Amy are the pumpkin carvers. I hope they don’t have any visits from raccoons roaming through their neighborhood.

Corn shocks are another staple of Halloween for me. The fields around us were always filled with row after row of corn shocks. Now the only place I can find them is in Amish country. We like to drive around and watch as the corn is harvested. It’s as if time had stood still. It’s the same process that took place when I was young. Nothing says fall to me like a field of corn shocks and a flock of geese passing overhead on a cold October day. Add a full Harvest Moon in the background and it’s a perfect picture for Halloween.

I swear I didn't tip over this corn shock!

Now the only thing missing is the outhouse. People from my generation can’t think of Halloween without remembering the outhouse. It’s getting harder to find an outhouse these days. At one time every house had one nearby. Some people referred to them as “The Two-holer.” That name was used because most of them had two round holes cut into the wood board that functioned as the seat. A big hole for adults and a smaller one for the kids. You only needed one hole for adults because nobody liked sharing the outhouse while you were conducting your business. 

The exception to that was a twenty-holer I encountered at the airstrip in Qui Nhon after we came ashore in Vietnam. While waiting on the airstrip to fly to Pleiku in the Central Highlands, many of us had to take care of business and headed for the latrine. It was a simple wood building that looked like an extra-long outhouse with a door on each end. It had a long seat along one wall with twenty or more holes. We all sat down and started going about our business, when a Vietnamese woman entered and sat down on a hole next to me. She smiled at me. I was too dumbfounded to know what to do. We all looked at each other, wondering if we were in the wrong outhouse. The woman finished her business, got up, and left. We all broke out laughing. Welcome to a culture our government had failed to tell us about. 

That outhouse would have been mighty hard to tip over on Halloween. A lot of outhouses ended up in a horizontal position as ghosts and goblins roamed the countryside in search of tricks to play. Soaping windows was another trick, but I think it was easier putting an outhouse upright than cleaning soap-smeared windows.

As this Halloween approaches, may your pumpkins be raccoon free, may your treat bag be full of candy, and if you still have corn shocks or an outhouse, may they remain upright.

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Predicting Winter Weather

Across the Fence #517

The steel gray sky seems to arrive earlier every year. That gray sky penetrates my body, bringing with it a chill that stays with me until the last patch of snow recedes into the woods in the spring. The cold chill of winter is in the air and it’s early October. What happened to fall? Where’s Indian Summer? There was snow on the ground in Sherpeland this morning, October 4th. It was enough to track a cat, so it counts as a snowfall.

Predicting the number of snowfalls each winter has been going on for a long time. An old farmer told me how he determined the number of snowfalls. He claimed he’d been “right on” or within a couple of snows every year. He said he takes the number of the first snowfall and adds the number of days since the last new moon. But, it’s not always that easy to determine if a snowfall counts. You have to be able to track a cat in the grass. Cement and blacktop doesn’t count. And, the snow has to stay through a sunrise or sunset. In other words, it snowed last night and was still on the grass when the sun came up, but it all melted by 9:00 am. There was enough snow in the grass that I think I could have tracked a cat, at least in the shorter grass. Does that count? It should, but if I take October 4 and add the number of days since the last new moon, September 23, that’s seven days added to four. That’s only eleven snowfalls! That would be great with me, but I find it very hard to believe. 

I’ve also heard that the number of the day you get your first snow is the number of snowfalls you’ll have that winter. This year that was October 4th. I’m willing to bet we’ll have to endure a lot more than four snowfalls. So I’m going to throw that old folktale out too.

Another old farmer said that if the first snow falls on unfrozen ground, it doesn’t count. The ground isn’t frozen yet, so apparently this first snow where I could track a cat, and the snow lasted through the sunrise, didn’t count. See how hard it is to count snowfalls.

Many people think the best winter forecaster is the woolly worm, or woolly bear caterpillar, depending on what you like to call it. Can the color of woolly bears tell us how long and severe our winter will be? If a lot of them are crawling around with a heavy black coat, look out. The shorter the reddish-brown band is, the longer and tougher the winter will be. I’ve been observing all the woolly bears on my walks each day. There are a lot of them to observe these days. My observations have been that they aren’t completely black, and many have a reddish brown center ring that takes up one third of their length. If you want to go with the woolly bear prognosticators, we’ll have a harsh beginning, a mild middle, and a harsh end to the coming winter. Other people claim to see only solid black ones, so take your pick. Supposedly woolly bears have been accurate 80% of the time since the 1950’s. So, depending on which woolly bears you’ve spotted, you’ll either be right or wrong.

Woolly Bear Caterpillar - Mid-October colors this year.

There are many old folk tales about predicting what kind of weather we’re going to have. I think we need to observe nature and the world around us, as our ancestors did before we had access to daily weather forecasts and Dopler Radar. Nature has its own way of predicting what kind of weather is coming. 

I like to observe which way chimney smoke is going to see what weather is coming. When chimney smoke descends, nice weather ends. If the smoke rises, a good day is ahead.

The old timers say if ant hills are high in July, winter will be snowy. If the birds are frantically attacking your bird feeders, look for a snowstorm to be on the way. The same is true if squirrels are extra busy. Also watch the bird migration patterns. The earlier they leave in the fall, the longer the winter will be. If they’re still hanging around in November, it’s pretty obvious that winter won’t be as long. They know they don’t need to get out of town and head south if harsh weather isn’t on the way. 

I’ve also heard the brighter the fall colors are on the trees, the colder and snowier the winter. So far our colors are only about 40% so it’s too early to make a prediction using that old timer’s tale. Another winter predictor is that for every foggy morning in August, it will snow that many days in the winter. Since I neglected to count the foggy mornings, I can throw that one out the window too.

I’ve found the best way to observe the weather is with a rock. Place a good-size rock outside, where you can see it from your window. If it’s dry, it means good weather. When the rock is wet, it rained, or is still raining. If the rock is covered with frost, it’s freezing outside. If the rock is white, it’s been snowing. If you can’t see the rock, it's either foggy or it snowed a whole bunch. When the rock is visible again, warmer weather is here. When you see green grass around the rock, spring has arrived and it’s time to put away the snowblower.

I’ve found that’s the best way to know what the weather is like. Find yourself a rock and give it a try!

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Book Clubs, Writing, and Bells Palsy

Across the Fence #516

Linda and I recently spent a wonderful afternoon in Spring Grove, Minnesota. I’d been invited to talk to their Sons of Norway Book Club. This was a followup to a program I did for their Sons of Norway meeting in July, when I was invited to talk about my writing and “Across the Fence.” After that meeting, they had decided to read my series of Across the Fence books in their book club. That’s what brought us back to Spring Grove on a beautiful summer day. We had a wonderful time at their meeting, and I was surprised by how many people showed up for the book club. It’s nice to know that people are still interested in reading “real books” that they can hold in their hands.

I should mention that I looked and talked a bit different from when they saw and heard me at that July meeting. The first thing I did was explain to them what had happened, so we could get their wondering out of the way. On July 20, I woke up and realized I had a problem when I looked in the mirror. My mouth was drooping, I had trouble spitting while brushing my teeth, and I had pain at the base of my neck. I did all the exercises to check for a stroke, but I was fine. I knew then that I probably had Bells Palsy. I had it on the right side of my face 27 years ago. Now the left side of my face was paralyzed. I knew from before, the sooner I could be treated with Prednisone, the better my chance of recovery. It was a Sunday, but I got into Urgent Care in Viroqua. They even did a CT scan of my brain. Luckily, my brain was fine and no tumors, which was nice to know. And yes, I really do have a brain. Now I can prove it. I was also tested for Lyme’s Disease, which often causes Bell’s Palsy symptoms. That test was also negative. 

So, I’m pretty special, I’ve had Bell’s Palsy twice. I tell people I had it on the other side 27 years ago, so I had to get it on the left side to level my face out. Now I’m a level-headed Norwegian-American who can drool out of both sides of his mouth at the same time. You’ve got to keep a sense of humor about it and can’t let it get you down. Most cases are back to normal after eight weeks. I’m now heading toward week twelve and there’s still a lot of paralysis. I still can’t blink or close my right eye, I can’t smile, and the right side still droops. I have trouble talking because my mouth can’t form certain letters. At least the pain is gone. We’ll just have to give it time and see how much movement I get back. It’s hard to be patient at times. So if you see me and I look like a grumpy, old man who never smiles, and sometimes has to wear a black eye patch, I’m still the same person on the inside. I may be getting older, but I’m not grumpy! Even if I don’t get a full recovery, I’ll never complain. Things could be a lot worse and there’s so much to be thankful for.

So if some of you have seen me around and wondered, “What the H happened to Sherpe?” now you know. 

Now lets get back to talking about writing and books. It would be nice if every community had a book club or writing group. It takes people who are willing to organize and lead a club, and Spring Grove has some great leaders and members. Book clubs are a great way for people to come together and discuss a book that everyone has read. It also takes a good leader to keep the discussion focused and bring everyone’s comments into the mix. After the Spring Grove meeting, several people told me they liked having the author who wrote the stories talk about them and explain the writing process I go through.

Spring Grove Book Club. Me seated, second from right.

Whenever I give a presentation, I always tell people, it’s important that they tell their stories too. Everyone has a story. People will say, “There’s nothing to tell.” There is so much to tell. I wish my parents and grandparents had written down some stories about their lives. That’s history, and if you’re into family history, those stories become priceless. Our cemeteries are full of stories that were never told. They are lost to us forever and that’s a shame.

I’ve been asked to do a two-day writing class at Norskedalen in November, to help people get started in writing their stories. I’ve done one-day classes in the past, but having two days will allow us time to expand on ways to get started, and allow more time to do some writing during the class. 

Several years ago, one student in my class came up with a very creative way to tell her story. She told it from the viewpoint of a dog she had when she was young. It gave the story a whole different perspective. Writing can be a lot of fun.

If you’re interested in the writing class, contact Norskedalen for details. And don’t worry, I won’t be a grumpy, old instructor. 

  

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