Book of Days

Once again it is Halloween, spelled with an apostrophe in earlier days: Hallowe’en, which is derived from All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Hallows or All Saints Day on the First of November. And when you spell it with the apostrophe, or call it by its original name, the holiday takes on a certain reverence that is easily passed over nowadays. The older version looks more enchanting, more magical, and it feels more connected to its place as the night that ushers in our traditional time of remembering those who have gone before us: The days that follow bring us All Saints, of course, on the First, and also All Souls Day on the Second, which is, perhaps, the more homey of the two. And while these are reverent days of the Church, those early popes and archbishops were only responding to traditions that had been going on for centuries already.

It seems the dropping of the apostrophe in Hallowe’en was already in vogue when the photographs above were taken 91 years ago. But certainly the spirit of the evening is there in these folks who put together costumes with what they had on hand and who, by the look of things, delighted in their transformation. This was no ordinary night for them. It was a night to become something else, something they weren’t normally. That’s magic.

Here’s the Convivio Dispatch that I wrote last year for Halloween night. It was titled Subtlety. I’m reprising it here only because I really liked this particular dispatch, and because it is Halloween and there is yet much to do in our house today: jack o’lanterns to carve, special dishes to prepare, decorating to finish. But still, I want to pass this particular Halloween present along to you. Everyone should get to read at least one really good ghostly tale on Halloween. And while I don’t know if this one fits the bill, it is what I have to offer you for this night. –jlc

CONVIVIO DISPATCH: SUBTLETY

And so here we are at my favorite time of year: autumn. Not that much happens here in this tropical place to mark the transition. Trees don’t change to brilliant hues, except for maybe one, the Florida Almond, whose leaves turns a beautiful bright red, but that barely counts when they are few and far between and when all the trees around them are still bright green and dripping with chlorophyll. There are no apples here to gather, and the pumpkins are trucked in from northern climes.

No, autumn in Lake Worth is definitely an exercise in subtlety. We notice shifting patterns of light and cooler breezes from the north begin to wend their way down the peninsula, like they have this past week. Those who don’t notice subtletly, or folks who have not been here very long, won’t even experience this subtlety. To them, it’s perpetual summer here. But while the change may be elusive, it is real.

This place is full of experiences like this. Subtle shifts beneath the radar that only the most perceptive pick up. Those of us who have lived here a long time like it this way. And those who lived here a long time ago seem to like it this way, too. Old ghosts, I think, prefer elusiveness. Even really big old ghosts.

My neighbor Earl loves to tell the tale of the day he was out in his boat on the Atlantic not far off of Lake Worth when something a bit extraordinary happened. It was an autumn day, just like today, clear, still, sparkling sunshine. He had a good day, caught a snook and some mackerel, and was just whiling some time away with a cup of coffee steaming hot from the thermos that Margaret had packed for him when something shimmered in the water and caught his eye. He looked over the side. Beneath the surface he saw a ship, a galleon. He looked from above down onto the mast and the deck and it was all there so clearly. He was sure it was the legendary Santa Margarita, a Spanish galleon laden with New World silver and gold that sunk off the east coast of Florida in a hurricane in 1595 and was never found. And there she was, majestic, massive, right beneath him in the clear Atlantic waters. And just as soon, a school of fish, flashing silver bronze then darkness, and silver again, and the school was vast and huge and he could practically feel the current of its motion beneath him. In its wake, clarity. No silver, no bronze, no blackness, no galleon. Just liquid crystalline water. The mast beneath him, wooden deck, all had vanished.

Was it ever there? Earl likes a bit of Jameson’s in his coffee sometimes, but Margaret insists: no drinking on the boat, so we know the vision can’t be blamed on sun and whisky. Earl says he circled the area five or six times, but still, there was no sign of the wreck. But he saw it so clearly, so distinctly. Like autumn in Florida, the galleon appeared, and then had vanished as quickly as it had come.

I love stories like this, the quiet run-in with parallel places. Even as a boy, my tastes ran to the quiet. I liked the stories folks had of quiet brushes with a world beyond, but was never all that fond of tales that were meant to be scary. Blood and gore? No, thank you. Axe murderers? No interest.

This may go back to the very first time I was scared out of my wits, which just happened to be on Hallowe’en. I don’t remember how old I was, but for sure I was little, and I was trick-or-treating alone, for some reason. No neighborhood friends to be found. It was just me, dressed as a hobo, I’m sure, because I was almost always a hobo on Hallowe’en. Mom would sew a few patches on my CPO coat and rub some black make up on my face to give me a few days’ beard growth, and we would dig an old crushed hat out of a bin in the closet and off I’d go, gathering treats. It was usually with other kids but that year, it was not, and I made my rounds, collecting candy from all the neighborhood moms, but when I rang the bell at this one house on Emerson Place, I got more than I had bargained for.

It was late afternoon, not dark yet, and it was a simple home, painted pale green, I remember that. Three concrete steps led up to the doorbell that I had just rung, and the door opened and what was there but a tall man who towered above me, dressed all in black with a long black and red cape and a black silk top hat with a crazy moustache and he tossed a box of Jawbreakers in my open bag and then he laughed. A deep, hollow cackling laugh that rattled through me, into my ears and out through my toes. And then he spun his cape around and closed the door as suddenly as he had opened it.

I stood there, panicked, unsure of what had just happened. I never got to say, “Trick or treat,” and I wasn’t quite able to move for a few seconds, but I felt sure I needed to get out of there. I turned around, and then I did what seemed to me the most logical thing to do: I reached into my bag of treats and I took out the box of Jawbreakers and I set it on the top step by the door. There was no doubt in my mind that if anyone was going to poison an unsuspecting trick-or-treater, it was this madman. And then I ran away, off to the next house.

What the guy on Emerson Place lacked in subtlety, he certainly made up for in panache. What style! But it was lost on me at the time. I was just a little kid shaking in his shoes, surprised I wasn’t swiped off the front porch and stuck into an oven with all the other neighborhood kids he must have taken. To me, it was a narrow escape. The guy in the top hat, though, he was just having some fun. Unfortunately, he lacked tact and yes, he lacked subtlety. He never would have seen Earl’s phantom galleon, I’m sure of it.

It was not long after that incident that I heard a story told quietly amongst adults over coffee at the dinner table. I was that kid who liked to sit there and listen to the grownups. Family friends would come to visit my parents and my grandparents and the younger ones would bring their kids, who would want to play with me. They’d sit next to me and slobber through dinner and even before they had wiped their hands they would jump up and grab my shirt and say, “Come on, Johnny, let’s play!” But me, I knew the good stuff was just about to begin. The percolator was on the stove, the pastries were in the boxes from the Italian bakery, and the stories would be getting good as the night wore on.

Perhaps that night there were no kids my age visiting, or perhaps we were playing a game that involved my closing the kid in a closet or something, but nonetheless, I got to sit and hear how this woman had recently lost a close friend in a terrible accident. And how one evening a few weeks after the funeral, during dinner, the doorbell rang. She got up to answer the door, but when she did, no one was there. And the dog, who spent all his time in the fenced-in front yard, and who barked at anyone and anything who passed by, but who never barked at her friend, was napping quietly on the porch. He looked up at her, she looked at the dog, and then she stepped outside to have a look around. No one to be seen. The swing gate at the sidewalk was latched closed. And she had no doubt then that it was her friend who had come to stop by, to check on her, maybe say the good bye she had not been able to say before.

This is subtlety. These are the stories I like. Especially at Halloween, a night given to mystery. It is the old passing of the year in the Celtic calendar, autumn giving way to winter, perhaps more sensible than the random date of January 1 that we’ve been using these past few centuries. The Celts called it Samhain (pronounced sow-an), and a good many of our Halloween traditions come out of this celebration. It was a time of year when the bridge between this world and the unseen mystical world was open and beings from either side could easily make the crossing. And who’s to say it is not still so? Seth and I have been taken up lately in watching documentaries about the workings of the universe. Talk about mindboggling! The more you tell me about astrophysics and quantum mechanics and the universe, the more bewildering it all seems to me. Anything is possible.

I, for one, am quite content knowing the Santa Margarita is still out there somewhere, unfound in our coastal Atlantic waters for centuries even in these high-tech days, and I am quite willing to suspend my sense of disbelief long enough to believe that Earl had crossed that bridge, or at least come to view the opposite side of it. But that may be because I love a good story. And all I do is offer these stories to you as my gift; it’s up to you to do with them what you will.

And with that I bid you good night. Happy All Hallow’s Eve.
John