For Whom the Bell Tolls

      We grew up largely without the joys of candy and sodas - they were only for special occasions.  Our parents were health-conscious and saw little redeeming value in those things.  I believed this misconception was probably fostered by a human interest story they read in Reader’s Digest magazine. My dad got Reader’s Digest for his waiting room, but there was also some lure in their million-dollar sweepstakes.  While you didn’t have to buy to enter, no one really believed that claim.  My parents once noticed me reading it and cutting out an article. I suppose that if you have a child that hates to read, and you catch her reading something, you go out and buy a  lifetime subscription to it.  Little did they know that I was merely in my adolescent coupon-clipping phase and had spotted a coupon for Milky Way candy bars. 

 I was planning to make a modest withdrawal from one of my three bandaid boxes full of quarters to accompany the coupon on my next trip to a store.  I had accumulated this savings by asking my dad for a quarter every night after dinner, when he was dozing through the NBC - Texaco Huntley Brinkley Report.  Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were among television’s early news anchors. In my quest to optimize my payoff, I had learned that asking for a  dollar would wake him up, as he would need  to inquire why I needed a dollar, but if I just asked for a quarter, he would reach into his pocket and deliver.  

After doing this most nights for a year, I had accumulated close to $100 - $90 and 25 cents to be precise. While we had allowances, it was a  poorly run system, and I frequently forgot to collect my monthly $2; then it just seemed unprincipled to collect the $2 when I was getting 25 cents a day.

      Our unheeded pleas for candy were not helped by the fact that our country well water had no fluoride, and cavities were relatively common.  To our dismay, when having his cavities filled, our father preferred drilling pain over the lingering fat-lip sensation that accompanied a novocaine injection. That fact, on top of having a professional exchange with our dentist, meant that novocaine was not a part of our cavity remediation experience. Still, our dentist was a very kind man, who always assured us that the drilling “might not hurt.”  

I learned early on that those assurances should not be given much stock. I knew the dentist’s basset hound, Bubbles, from his visits to my father, and Bubbles was most definitely not awake during his “procedure” to prevent him from lusting after the female dogs in his neighborhood.  

I also know he had received novocaine when he got his ear stitched following a dispute with the dog next door.  

For whatever reason, when we went to the little shop of horrors, what we received for our trouble was a lot of character and a little roll of floss in a molar-shaped plastic box. 

      Growing up on a farm was good for a great many things. Halloween was just not one of them. The day after, at school, was torture. Kids would come in with wonderful stories and huge grocery bags full of candy from their haul the previous night.  So much that they would gladly give away large quantities. 

I, on the other hand, felt like a little Amish kid.  The dream of walking house to house with my friends in the city, hauling a bag so full of candy it was dragging on the ground, and passing all of the other scary beggars,  just couldn’t be matched on the farm.   And if you stayed out late enough, the older, bad kids would be there to set paper bags of dog scat on fire on people’s doorsteps so that the father would come out and have to step on the mini-inferno to extinguish it, resulting in predictable collateral scat on his shoe. To young developing minds, that prank just never got old.

      Being driven around by your parents to far-flung neighboring farms just sucked the life out of the whole Halloween experience, and everyone tired of it after a couple of houses.  There was no illusion on either side; Halloween in the country was lame.  You could tell that the few houses we stopped at knew exactly how many goblins to expect because, instead of huge bowls of candy, they would have a small saucer with three or four pieces  of candy....or popcorn balls.  Who the heck wanted a popcorn ball?  Halloween was a time to get name brand candy into the house.

      My most memorable Halloween occurred when I  was ten.  Actually it was my only memorable Halloween.  I had reason to believe that that year’s Halloween might be different - my parents believed I was old enough to navigate the pastures with my older brother, Jack, and his friends, if they would allow me to tag along.  After days of negotiations, Jack relented, and I learned that he meant  “following” in the strictest sense of the word, i.e., never closer than ten yards. Quite honestly, it didn’t really matter; anything was better than suffering the humiliation of being driven from house to house by a parent. It was a different story for Liz.  All of her stars lined up, and she was able to land a much-coveted invitation to a friend’s house in the city that year.   

I was excited to follow Jack - we traveled over hill and dale and had our best haul ever - we visited seven houses, and five of them had candy!  

Early on, Jack and his friends tried their darndest to lose me, but I wasn’t going to let anything spoil this night, and I was proud of my ability to keep up. After a while they forgot about me, and by the third house, I was actually walking with them.  When we began our journey home, I fell behind, largely because of the need to count my five pieces of candy over and over.  I took great care planning how I was going to stretch out the moment by consuming only one piece a week.  That would take me past Thanksgiving, when I could restock with solid chocolate pilgrims from the kids table.

      After a while I realized that the boys were no longer in sight.  In a moment of weakness, I  hollered out Jack’s name, but they were so far ahead that I could not be heard. Fortunately, we were in our own pasture, and I had no bulls to fear, only our friendly horses and cows.    

Unfortunately, I had never been deep in the pasture by myself at night.  The full moon reflected off the stream and ponds, creating some very spooky special effects.  It looked nothing like the pasture during the day.   Suddenly, over the noise of my pounding heart, I heard a bell tolling in our pasture, and it wasn’t far away.  There was no church nearby, and the only things missing to complete the horror scene were zombies and  Vincent Price’s ghoulish laugh.  Feeling very  uneasy, I began to pick up the pace. 

The bell was closing in on me quickly, as though it was tolling for me......and it was, but my fear gave way to relief as I realized it was Jack’s cow, Molly, and her Swiss cowbell.  

      Molly was a Brown Swiss with a wonderful disposition, so she got to wear the bell.  I am not sure how much of an honor it was for Molly to listen to a loud bell around her neck, but she didn’t seem to mind.  Under normal circumstances I would not have been concerned about Molly running over to me - I knew she  wouldn’t hurt me - but this night I was dressed as a headless horseman.  Along with being inherently slow, I was wearing a heavy papier-mache pumpkin head with blood dripping out of the mouth and tiny eyeholes, and a cape that got snagged on every bush.  This was a hand-me-down costume, and every aspect of it was too big.  

      I quickly assessed the situation and dismissed the notion of standing firm and greeting Molly, as I just wasn’t confident she would recognize me.  Consequently, I felt my only chance to cheat death was to head for the bushes…oblivious briefly, to their thorny stock.  I started to run, and as I picked up speed, the pumpkin head slipped down over my shoulders and chest so I could no longer see out of the eye holes or move my arms. 

The celestial odd makers were betting heavily on Molly.  The bushes, consisting mainly of briars, welcomed me.   

      When I eventually emerged, I was scratched and torn, but alive.  With my cape in shreds  I prepared to finish the journey home.  There on the other side of the thicket, waiting to greet me, was Molly. 

And at that moment I realized, to my horror, that somewhere in the struggle for my life, my candy was lost....all five pieces.  I stood there stunned while Molly exchanged bovine pleasantries, licking me and nudging me with her head.  We walked for a while along the fence  toward the barn and then, torn and

defeated, I climbed up the fence rails and slipped onto her back, where she kindly delivered me home, announcing our arrival with the clanging of her bell. 

Clean-up Editor: Toni Gardner, Author of  "My Fathers" and "Walking Where the Dog Walks"