Another Varmint County holiday season is upon us and as usual, the season was kicked off with some lively goings-on during that most popular of non-holidays, Halloween.
Varmint County Halloweens have always been a mixture of the ludicrous and the macabre, whether we're talking about spectacular stunts such as the placing of two jackasses and a wagon on the peaked roof of Varmint County Elementary School (Judge Hugh Ray, Archie Aslinger and others, circa 1958) or more mundane tricks such as the theft of the last outdoor privy in Lower Primroy (Corky and Peavy Perkins, 1996).
In between are a litany of pranks, some of them becoming regular traditions such as the annual torching of the highway bridge over Stinking Creek by members of the Hockmeyer clan.
For over 20 years the Hockmeyers would gather at the wooden bridge every Halloween night, drink moonshine and build a bonfire on the bridge. Every year the Lower Primroy Volunteer Fire Department would arrive in the nick of time to put out the blaze before it melted through the asphalt pavement and engulfed the wooden superstructure.
"Why are your young men so dead-set on burning that bridge?" Sheriff Smoky once asked Caleb Hockmeyer, the clan elder. "If it burns down, your folks can't get out of the hollow to go into town."
"Sheriff, we've been hounding the county to build a new bridge across that creek for years and nothing happens. I reckon they just figured if they burn it to the ground, we might finally get a new bridge that ain't on the verge of falling down," Caleb drawled.
Caleb's explanation might have been convincing except that three years ago the county finally received some federal dollars to replace the Stinking Creek Bridge with a new, concrete and steel structure. On Halloween night, new Sheriff Hiram Potts sent some deputies up to Stinking Creek to check on things and they found the usual crowd of Hockmeyers gathered on the new bridge.
The new bridge is fireproof, but deputies Cass Pinetar and Herbie Aslinger found 50 sticks of dynamite and a half-ton of ammonium nitrate rigged up in the middle of the span, ready to detonate.
What with the disappearance of the last outdoor privies and the scarcity of jackasses and mule carts these days, really good Halloween pranks have become fewer and further between. There's the usual rolling of the trees on the courthouse lawn with toilet paper, an occasional tire burning in the middle of some country road and a few incidents up on the interstate where eggs are dropped on cars from the Exit 137 Overpass, but by and large Halloween has become dominated by costume parties and small kids making the trick-or-treat rounds for candy.
Then there are the attempts to raise money for causes ranging from volunteer fire departments to the women's shelter to the Varmint County High School Marching Band. These fundraisers take the form of, you guessed it, haunted houses, haunted forests, haunted corn mazes and anything else that some group can think of that's worth haunting.
This year, the high school cheerleading squad decided to raise money so they can compete in the Southeastern Regional cheerleading competition at Disney World. The girls came up with the idea of using the old abandoned Lower Primroy School for a "haunted school."
Among the highlights was "The Cafeteria from Hell," where visitors were treated to a plate of intestines, eyeballs and fried grasshoppers served by zombies. Another highlight was the "Undead Health Class" where Professor Dracula lectured a room filled with teenage vampires on health and survival tips.
"If you're going to raise tomatoes so you can enjoy a Bloody Mary or two, be sure to support the plants with metal cages, not wooden stakes," the Professor suggested in his best Eastern European accent. "Varieties that do well in shady areas are best to plant."
Visitors could also take a driver's ed class taught by instructor Lucretia Coble, who is legally blind. Lucretia would get behind the wheel of a 1956 Chevy donated by Doc Filstrup and show student passengers how to parallel park, signal left turns and slow down at intersections, all on a carefully engineered driving course. Lucretia would turn left into the front of a beauty salon, try to parallel park in a space reserved for bicycles with fender-crunching efficiency, and slow down half-way between two intersections then speed up and run down a lady pushing a baby carriage.
The haunted school was also filled with the usual collection of ghosts, goblins and axe murderers. In the chemistry class, Mad Professor Jekyll would concoct a boiling test tube of foullooking liquid, then drink it and collapse behind his desk, emerging in a few seconds as Professor Hyde.
The most memorable part of the haunted school, however, was the gymnasium, where a mock basketball game between the Varmint County Lady Vipers and the Zombie High Walking Dead took place each night for a week. The Zombies used a special basketball, the head of Coach B.O. Snodgrass, or at least a basketball painted up to look like the coach.
Scattered around the edges of the court were stacks of coffins, donated by County Mayor and mortician Clyde Filstrup Junior. Clyde Junior didn't want to expose his expensive stockpile of caskets to possible dings and scratches, but his wife Matilda is one of the cheerleading squad sponsors while daughter Stephanie is co-captain, so Clyde was stuck.
Some of the caskets remained closed while one or two were opened and dummy corpses laid inside. Football players Curtis McAdoo and Abe Shouse also volunteered to dress up like a vampire and a zombie and lay motionless in two of the coffins, rising occasionally to frighten anyone approaching too closely.
This is where the whole haunted school idea almost unraveled on the very first night. While the kids were staging their first basketball game, Clyde Junior had to tend to business back at the funeral home. A wake and receiving of friends was underway for old Carlisle McCracken, the last local descendant of one of the county's pioneering settlers, the namesake for the landmark rock formation known as McCracken's Neck.
McCracken descendants from all across the nation had gathered to pay their respects, even though most of these distant relatives had never met the reclusive Carlisle. They were actually all in town for the reading of the will, as the dearly departed was reputed to be a rich old miser.
"I will now open the casket so you can pay your respects," Clyde told Judge Hiram McCracken of Burr County, Carlisle's greatnephew and the only member of the family to see him alive in the past decade.
"Uh, something's wrong. We've made a terrible mistake," Clyde stammered as he stared at an empty coffin.
At about the same time, down at the Varmint County Haunted High School, young Stephanie Filstrup and her fellow cheerleaders were about to pose for a publicity photograph for the Southeastern Regional Cheerleading Competition program. They decided to gather around one of the coffins piled up in one corner of the gym, choosing a particularly fashionable casket with gold trim around a white enameled exterior.
"Let's open it up and Stephanie can lie down in the coffin while the rest of us gather around in a semicircle," Kathy Hogshead suggested.
"Wow, that's a great dummy corpse. He's really ugly but looks real. Hey, Stephanie, get into the coffin with the dummy and act like you're going to bite him or something."
"Kiss him on the cheek. That's it. Great picture!"
"Uh guys, something's wrong. This guy feels kinda cold and clammy. I don't think it's a dummy."
"Ewww."
"Ugh. Ohmigod, You kissed him!"
About that time Clyde arrived with two assistants and a few members of the McCracken family to retrieve the mortal remains of Carlisle McCracken.
What they found was a stampede of young people heading for the door, one blurting out, "There's a real dead guy in there!"
"Daddy! How, how could you? I kissed a dead guy!" Stephanie said, choking back tears as she joined the exodus.
"Clyde," Matilda Filstrup stated coldly. "You're an idiot."
"Hey, I didn't volunteer to let you take my caskets. That was your idea," Clyde yelled at his wife's retreating form.
"I've got another idea. Sleep at the funeral home with your coffins tonight. I'm not speaking to you," Matilda shot back as she chased after her mortified daughter.
But as they say, all's well that ends well. After the rumors about McCracken's corpse made the rounds of Varmint County the next day, an overflow crowd showed up at the haunted school for the rest of the week. The cheerleaders not only raised enough money to pay for their trip, but had enough left over to donate $3,000 to the Christmas Toys for Tots fund.
"Clyde, a lot of folks are disappointed that you didn't leave old McCracken down at the gym for the rest of the week," Sheriff Smoky told Clyde at Doc Filstrup Senior's weekly poker game.
"A lot of people called me with the same request but I couldn't do it," Clyde replied. "Once the family got a look at old Carlisle and realized how ugly he was, they had the body cremated."
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