My writing group had a Halloween story challenge. I was stumped about where to begin (we usually get more of a prompt than that) and was talking about it with a friend who always seems to point me in the right direction. She asked why things always had to be dark and scary and then suggested that I could write something about Headless Mike (the centerpiece of my Halloween decorations). I’ll tell you what, sometimes inspiration is just that easy!
Here is my Halloween story. As Loretta Lynn would say, it is all true, even the parts that didn’t really happen.
Headless Mike
In 1918 Vern Pickle, died in Long Beach. He was 19 years old. Vern had gone to the cyclone coaster at the Pike on his day off to try to retrieve a hat belonging to a young lady friend (what a chivalrous guy). He rode the car up to the top and hopped out. When he bent over to retrieve the hat, the car coming the other way on the parallel track decapitated him. His body washed up on the beach the next day, but his head wasn’t found until a month later, lying among the rocks at near the jetty. It is said that Vern’s ghost still roams the City, ready to lend a hand.
Source: Claudine Burnett, author of Died In Long Beach
Our first Halloween on Vermont Street, I was surprised to be the only house on the block putting up decorations. But the idea caught on and these days is fairly competitive.
The signature of my Halloween decorations is Headless Mike, affectionately named after my husband, Mike with a head.
Headless Mike is made from some of Mike’s old clothes that I pilfered from the Goodwill bag, stuffed with newspaper. He even has “hands” made from old gardening gloves. Headless Mike spends the month of October sitting comfortably in a chair on the front porch. I’d like to say that he keeps an eye on things, but since he doesn’t have a head, being a lookout really isn’t his thing.
Now, even though I am the one who created Headless Mike in the first place, I continue to be regularly startled by the specter of this “person” sitting on my front porch. There is something about his size and the fact that he is wearing real clothes that lends an air of authenticity to the month-long porch-sit. I’m not the only one, real Mike and especially our poor mailman are also often startled throughout October.
Real Mike is a friendly and easy-going guy. He cares about his neighbors and his neighborhood. But there are a few things that get him really riled up. One is people who don’t pick up after their dogs, another is littering.
Last October I put up all of my Halloween decorations, including Headless Mike. Real Mike and I were out front admiring my handiwork and discovered that someone had left a giant dog turd on the parkway.
Oh, the rant that followed! How he was going to install cameras, that if he caught whoever it was, he was going to follow them home and leave it at their front door, how people who don’t pick up after their dogs shouldn’t be allowed to have animals … and so on.
I looked over at Headless Mike and asked him if next time he would please scare that guy out of letting his dog poop on our lawn because real Mike isn’t as young as he used to be, and he can’t take all the aggravation.
A few days later, I was out talking to my neighbor who is always up on the latest neighborhood gossip. She told me how her son Charlie had been walking to school the day before and when he passed the house around the corner where the big German Shepard lives, he smelled, then saw a GIANT pile of dog poop on their front step.
“Mom, it was piled right against the door, probably three-feet high! You KNOW that when they opened the door that it all came spilling in!”
I couldn’t stop laughing. But my gosh, who would pull a prank like that?
A few weeks later, the party girl with the Toyota Camry thought that we had forgotten about the last time we caught her littering and parked in front of our house again. This time I didn’t notice any trash on the ground when I left for the gym, but Mike discovered her discarded Del Taco leftovers after she drove away.
“Why wouldn’t she just put this in the trash! Doesn’t she know that all this stuff winds up in the Ocean?”
She came back that night and when I was heading to the gym the next morning, I noticed that her car seems kind of full of stuff. That’s weird. Oh well, gotta get to spin class.
Well, when I got home, Mike couldn’t wait to tell me how apparently someone had filled her car with trash.
“She was FREAKING out! She started tossing it out on the ground and all the kids and parents on their way to school started heckling her! She was crying, it was a whole scene. I went out there with a trash bag to try to help her out, but she just shoveled it on the ground and drove off. Lots of people stopped to help me pick it up. She won’t be coming back this time for sure.”
All month long, I kept finding empty Coors Light cans on the front porch next to Headless Mike’s chair. It was a little creepy. Mike doesn’t hang out on the front porch. Who was leaving empty beer cans out there?
Then one morning, I was leaving for the gym a little earlier than usual. When I stepped out on the front porch, I found Headless Mike with a half-full can of COLD Coors Light in his gardening glove hand!
Ok, so this creature made of old clothes stuffed with newspaper was roaming the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, magically avenging wrongdoing. Sure. Why not?
But HOW WAS HE DRINKING BEER? HE DOESN’T HAVE A HEAD!
I used to make a point of putting all my decorations out at once and then that was it. This year, I’m taking it a bit slower because I don’t want to put out the gravestones until I get the witch who crashed into the wisteria bush fleshed out a little bit better.
