Contracts and Mischief

I haven’t written anything in a very long time, but thanks to a little ceramic pumpkin, this Halloween I was reminded of past friends, contracts, and a little mischief.

Peg Taylor and Mom

Mom and Peg both had to take "Freddy Five Pin" home from bowling

Our neighbor, Peg Taylor, was one of my Mom’s best friends for years.  Rarely a day went by without Peg stopping by for coffee and catching Mom up on everything that was going on in the neighborhood.  They both loved to knit and crochet and do other crafts- like ceramics.  Peg had her own kiln, but bought her molded greenware from a local woman who had converted the covered porch of her house into a store.  "Toodie" was a kind woman who loved the kids who tagged along with our moms, but she was also a smart business woman.  She would tell new children, and remind those returning, that greenware was fragile and following her two rules: no touching it, and no running around her shelves of it, meant that at the very end, we got to pick a tiny greenware animal to paint and she would fire it for free to give to us next time.

Little Mouse from Toodie

Tiny Bee

Many moms like mine would offer to pay her for them, but she said it was a contract between her and the children, besides, the tiny molds cost very little, and the amount of slip the little animals took to pour was the stuff she would have thrown out anyway.

Little Red Rooster

When we kept our end of the bargain, she would let us kids pick a fragile animal from the children’s shelf and paint it.  It was an early example of magic for me- she would take this fragile molded slip clay and let us paint it with the dullest colors, then she would return a hard ceramic animal covered in the brightest shining glass.

Cub Scout Scott's Pumpkin

This memory started because this year my sister Colleen just mailed me a surprise of a ceramic mini pumpkin, that she somehow ended up with, which I made with my mom when I was 8.  My ambitious mother was our Cub Scout Den Leader, and ever the optimist, thought she could have a bunch of rowdy boys paint a ceramic Halloween pumpkin to have Peg fire for all of us.  I remember she had told Toodie she needed at least a dozen, even though there were not that many Cubs, because not everyone had been to Toodie’s and understood fragile greenware, so there was going to be breakage.  I knew about the contract- and with my usual perfectionism, I painted it carefully and very neatly, and I am thrilled that it just made it back to me!  This was a Halloween project- but on to the mischief part.

Peg and her husband, Jim

Peg's kids: Lisa, Missy, and Jimmy

Peg’s kids liked going to haunted houses and hay rides for Halloween.  The first time Peg asked my mom if I could go along, I learned why.  It wasn’t the spooky atmosphere and the adventure of being scared they liked- it was because Peg was terrified of it all and she would start screaming in the parking lot, and by the time we got back in the car- she had usually screamed herself hoarse. We were never scared, because we were giggling at her the whole time.  She would scream enough for all of us, and then make us laugh more when she would say she almost peed her pants multiple times at each event. I had never seen a grown adult admitting to being that terrified, and all the monster actors loved that she was such an easy and shrill screamer, which just made it funnier.  Every year Peg would claim it was the last time and she was never coming back, but every year in October she would be the one to ask us which one we wanted to go to.

Me doing Peg's Halloween makeup

Peg and Mom, ready for a Halloween party.
(My mom made so many elaborate costumes- a post for another time)

So one year, while we were at a haunted house with Peg on Halloween, something happened back in our neighborhood.

Ruby and Pete Brookhauser

We had another much older neighbor named Pete, and he was nice enough, but he was sort of miserly and crabby.  He was always asking my parents and Peg for help to repair major things, then he would give them $2.00 for “their trouble” like it was still 1930. It was not that he was poor, his wife had a beauty shop in their home, and they had tons of valuable antiques.  Most of them were on the second floor of their house, which he boarded up and shut off all the heat “to save money.”  Pete always had a new truck in his barn, and tractors, and he rented his many acres of fields to local farmers for their crops or livestock.  Pete and Ruby traveled across the US for vacations, and they had no children.  He was one of those people who made a big deal about how poor they were, in spite of evidence to the contrary.

So, the mischief started one Halloween.  Pete violated the Halloween contract by accidentally leaving his porch light on, and some local kids stopped for Trick or Treat.  He didn’t have any candy to give out, and instead of apologizing, he was crabby and lectured the kids that he was not in the business of giving out free candy, and then he shut off all his lights and told them to go home.  The kids did just that, and they returned with a few rolls of toilet paper and “decorated” his house.

Pete's house, after he removed the bushes and enclosed the front porch 

Well, Pete was very fussy about the outside of his house and yard, and he cared very much about the opinions of others, and he didn’t like that the whole neighborhood saw that kids had targeted him for his crankiness.  Peg thought it was hilarious and teased him about how kids had finally paid him back for his stinginess and crabbiness. She told him when you leave your porch light on, it means you are giving out candy- it was his own fault. This made him more embarrassed and upset.  He talked for months about how they would not leave any lights on next year.

Pete was so worked up, he started talking about the dreaded Halloween in September.  Peg told him to just buy some candy to hand out to the kids.  He said he would not be extorted into giving out free candy to a bunch of hooligans and future criminals.  Peg hatched a new plan and started a new tradition.  We still went to the haunted houses with her, but she took all of us neighborhood kids on stealth missions to Halloween-prank Pete every year.

That year, Pete made his wife sit in a totally dark house with no lights on at all, so everyone knew he was not participating in Halloween.  We dressed all in black and went at midnight giggling more about how such an innocent prank was annoying the local crabby old man than we did about Peg’s screaming at the haunted houses.

The first year that he woke up to another toilet-papered tree and bushes, Pete blamed the kids from the previous year.  Peg laughed at him and said he should try being nicer.

Two years after that, he was getting suspicious, but we had an adult who vouched for us- Peg said, “My kids were in bed by 10” which we all were- but she would pick us up at midnight for our mission.  She said to Pete, “How mean were you to those kids that they do this every year?”

Pete

We started looking forward to topping our previous year’s antics and Pete was equally determined to catch the culprits in the act, but it was of the utmost importance to him that no one could ever know that some kids had TP-ed his house.  He told Peg he was going to sit on the porch with a flashlight in the dark to catch these kids- not knowing he was talking to the ringleader herself.  That year she said, “Sorry kids, set your alarms, the mission is bumped back to 2 AM- I will be by to get you all then.”  He was out there the next morning at dawn trying to get it all cleaned up.

Sometimes we also soaped his windows- Peg drew a little ghost and wrote “BOO!” next to it.  He took a picture and tried to get every one of us to draw a ghost and write “Boo!” on papers like it was some sort of handwriting analysis.  Peg just said he was finally losing it and refused to cooperate- then finally wrote a big flowery “Boo!” in cursive that looked nothing like it.

A few years in, Pete was suspicious that Peg was involved, but at that point Peg was losing interest a bit.  She was once again waiting until late night, but in the meantime my Dad snuck down and perfected the technique of throwing an entire roll of TP over the maple tree in front of Pete’s house.  It was easily 20 feet high.  There was no way Pete would be able to clean it up until it blew down- maximum embarrassment!   Peg was so excited that some other person had joined in the fun when she took us kids there.

Dad, the mysterious joker

Peg was a person who grew up in the country, so she never locked her doors. All of us kids were with her at Pete’s, delightedly adding to the mayhem, so no one was home at her house.  My Dad snuck over and toilet-papered the inside of her house, hitting all the ceiling fans, dining room chairs, fireplace mantle, chandeliers, shower, going all over the house like a demented TP gremlin.  Dad was back at home when she dropped us off and she excitedly told Dad that someone else “got Pete good.”  When she got home and saw her house had been hit, she blamed Pete.  Of course, Pete denied it since he had no idea what happened.  Dad’s antics kept the feud fresh and interesting for a few more years.

Peg's house from our place- she mowed this enormous yard and field on her riding mower several times a week because she hated dandelions

So, of course, my dad teased her by growing a crop of them in our yard each spring

Each year we got creative with TP, wrapping the bushes in spirals like candy canes, we pre-made TP flowers to make his yard bloom, we wrapped it around the gutters so a curtain of TP enclosed the front porch, we tied it to the doorknobs, we managed to toss it completely over the house across the peak, and one year we tossed twelve full rolls over the maple tree like “the mystery man” had done.  It was a solid white blob in his front yard.  Pete never figured out for sure that it was Peg leading all the neighbor kids.

Pete's barn ramp, with me and Missy on the saucer, and my sister Colleen waiting with Lisa

In one of our final missions, Pete woke up in shock- no one TP’ed his house on Halloween. His happiness lasted until he went to the barn to get his truck out to drive to town.  All those exposed beams and the hayloft?  We had made the inside of his barn into a white-streamered wedding chapel.  Peg liked that we could take our time and really do it up right- it was stealth and had a big surprise reveal when he slid the barn door open, but it lacked the public embarrassment that Pete hated, and was the most important part of the contract to her.  So she had boosted me up onto the cap of his pickup truck and had me tie the toilet paper to the luggage rack and leave yards of TP flat on top.  As expected, he showed up at our house later ranting about how he drove through town with toilet paper streamers flying like a flag of shame from his truck.  As always, Peg asked Pete, “Did you try being nicer yet?”

Peg