Tag: Halloween

Thoughts on the Big Mo Pod Show 034: Laughing in the Face of Death

I heard the Big Mo Blues Show just (Halloween theme) this last Friday night and was not surprised to see that one of the songs discussed on the Big Mo Pod Show on Saturday was Peetie Wheatstraw’s “Devil’s Son-in-Law.”

When I first heard it, it got me chuckling because I didn’t understand hardly a single word until the last line. It was babbling. I can remember googling the term “Peetie Wheatstraw and unintelligible,” which revealed I’m not the only one who thinks he’s unintelligible. It’s a mondegreen mine field. It’s a good thing the lyrics are available.

I want to hastily point out that he’s not always unintelligible—but William Bunch aka Peetie Wheatstraw is speaking in tongues on that song. For comparison I listened to another song, “Sweet Home Blues” and I could understand just about every word in the lyrics.

That led me down the rabbit hole about the artist in a web search that seemed to have no end. I should probably say Brer Rabbit hole since most of my searches pointed in the direction of a character called Peter Wheatstraw, Petey Wheatstraw, as well as Peetie Wheatstraw who had variations in their identities, most often in the context of African American folklore.

I’m not going to attempt a summary of my web search on Peetie Wheatstraw; there’s too many twists and turns. You can start with the Wikipedia article. But from there, you can get trapped in Brer Rabbit’s little tunnels, which can run in different directions.

William Bunch was a blues artist in the 1930s who adopted the moniker “Peetie Wheatstraw.” While Big Mo says it’s sort of another name for Satan, I found confusing references by writers who claim that the Peter Wheatstraw character comes from Black folklore. There are those who believe that novelist Ralph Ellison wrote about a character in his book “Invisible Man” named Peter Wheatstraw and said it was the only character in the novel that was based on a live person—William Bunch.

Is that true? And did Ellison ever meet Peetie Wheatstraw (William Bunch)? I can’t tell from the web articles.

I was prompted to get my copy of “Invisible Man” out after reading a scholarly online essay mentioning the Peter Wheatstraw character, “Re-visioning Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for a Class of Urban Immigrant Youth” by Camille Goodison, CUNY New York City College of Technology. I couldn’t remember Wheatstraw at first, but there he was in Chapter 9.

Goodison reveals there is a lot more texture to the Wheatstraw character then just as a moniker adopted by William Bunch. Wheatstraw is probably more complex than the devil. He has many sides to him and could be helpful—but mostly in an indirect way. His guidance is full of riddles and there doesn’t seem to be a solid way to cut through the metaphorical morass. As Emily Dickinson advised, Wheatstraw may tell the truth—but tells it slant.

I still don’t know why he mumbles the song.

The Screaming Barn of Iowa City Rises Again

Harvest Preserve made the Screaming Barn of Iowa City rise from the grave only a couple of days after I mentioned it after our autumn walk on October 2 (Monday). Halloween is the inspiration!

It looks great!  There were enhancements in addition to the returning theme of grisly epitaph dad jokes.

It should be visible to a lot more drivers on Scott Boulevard in that area, mainly because of traffic detours from street construction.

What’s also different is a safety barricade which is for the safety of walkers. It stretches across the street entrance to the barn from Scott Boulevard. You can get great pictures from across the street near the Harvest Preserve entrance gate.

Critter Cam Tested and Ready to Go!

We’re trying to catch a glimpse of whatever or whoever has been removing one of our tile drain grates in our back yard for the last few weeks. It happens only at night. We bought a critter cam and it’ll go live tonight!

Today I ran the critter cam through a few tests to see if it would work in the dark. I set it up on a footstool, turned it on and clowned around in a dimly lit hallway. It wasn’t completely dark, and it seemed like I had to dance a fair amount to trigger the Passive Infrared Sensors (PIRs)—but it worked! Check the slideshow below.

I have no experience with these things and I don’t know whether the PIR Sensitivity might be set too high because we’re in autumn and the leaves are falling. It makes me wonder if the camera will trigger too much, making the image yield low. But there’s only 3 settings: high, medium, and low. Because I want to make sure I catch whatever is messing with our drain grate, I plan to leave the setting on High.

Sena and I mounted the camera on the nearest post supporting the sun room. She clowned around while standing next to the drain tile grate and it triggered and got her picture. We hope the rigging holds. I’ve set it to come on at sunset tonight and turn off at sunup tomorrow. It’s set to take photos, not videos for now.

It’s chilly out there; only 49 degrees. I don’t know how that’ll influence Bigfoot activity out there tonight.

I removed the rocks but left the worm gear clamp attached. Keep your fingers crossed!

The Screaming Barn of Iowa City!

The other day we went out for a walk on Scott Boulevard. There is an old barn right across the street from the Harvest Preserve entrance. It’s picturesque but on that day, it was festooned with Halloween decorations including goblins and ghouls and the ground was covered with gravestones inscribed with comical epitaphs.

We’ve been in the neighborhood for a couple of years and the old barn never looked like this. I recall reading something on the web about it undergoing this transformation in the past, but I can’t find it now.

I got in touch with Harvest Preserve and they told me that, while ACT owns the barn, they let Harvest Preserve decorate it. That is awesome!

The skeleton flying near the top of the barn is a spooky spectacle. What’s just as creepy is the mannequin inside the barn. There is a big door in the back that’s open and when the wind blew it creaked horribly.

If this were permanent, it would probably qualify for listing on the Roadside America web site.

Three Rock Fail on the Drain Tile Grate!

We can’t believe the 3-rock weight option to help secure the drain tile grate failed last night already. This morning, the top rock ended up about two feet away down the slope of our yard. The other two rocks were tipped over into the landscaping rod.

What’s crazy about this is how the top rock got moved so far away from the grate. I think something or someone would have to pick it up and move it. It wouldn’t have taken much strength to tip the two other rocks.

Obviously, the three grate guards failed as well, probably because they were drinking on the job. They will have to go.

On the bright side, the grate was still attached, and the clamp was secure. I replaced two of the rocks on the grate and we’re hoping for the best for now. But we won’t be surprised if it’s a mess tomorrow.

This is an ongoing mystery which requires a critter cam now. We are ordering one today.

We’re hoping to catch the culprit on camera if the shenanigans are still occurring when it’s delivered, and we’re pretty sure they’ll continue. There’s no reason I can think of for any animal to mess with a drain grate. There’s no food in the drain and water is a lot easier to get in the wild.

And what kind of person would pull a prank like this?

You’re probably wondering why I don’t just secure the pipe and the grate with stout screws and forget it. There are two reasons. One is that I’m not convinced that would eliminate the problem.

The other is like Clark Griswold’s attitude in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), expletives deleted:

“I think you’re all bleeped in the head. We’re ten hours from the bleeping fun park and you want to bail out. Well, I’ll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest. It’s a quest for fun. You’re gonna have fun, and I’m gonna have fun… We’re all gonna have so much bleeping fun we’re gonna need plastic surgery to remove our bleeping smiles! You’ll be whistling ‘Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah’ out of your bleeps! I must be crazy! I’m on a pilgrimage to see a moose. Praise Marty Moose! Holy bleep!”

This thing is too senseless and has been going on for too long for me to say, “Just screw it.” So, the drain tile grate mystery is now a quest. No, I don’t need an aspirin!

What I need is a guard I can depend on.

Tile Drain Grate Off Again!

Last night something removed our tile drain grate again! This time it wasn’t flipped. Something lifted the grate off the pipe and set it on the ground beside it. We were flabbergasted.

Recall that I thought I had secured the thing with a worm gear adjustable clamp on October 1, 2022. Up until that time, something (or someone) was flipping the grate upside down off the pipe every 2-3 days and lately every day.

I looked around and could not discern any animal tracks. The two crossed rods and thread over the grate were not disturbed. The worm gear clamp was still in place. I figured I had just not placed it close enough to the top of the grate and not screwed it down tightly enough.

So, I put the grate back on the pipe, pulled the clamp up so it covered the seam between the pipe and the grate better, and really cranked the screw tight enough so I could not move it at all.

Now we’re shopping for a critter cam. I favor the idea that a raccoon could be the culprit. Another outside possibility is a woodchuck. Both have fingers and are strong. This lid removal caper looks like it only happens at night. Sena checks it in the evening when she comes in from working out in the garden. That would tend to focus on the raccoon suspect since it’s nocturnal and the woodchuck is not.

Sena is going to get a brick or two to set on the grate and we will see what happens. Raccoons can lift 10-20 pounds, though. I’m thinking it’ll just move the bricks one at a time.

The other possibility is that the culprit might not be an animal. What if this is a kid playing games? There are not any kids in the neighborhood old enough to pull this off, though.

I’m pretty sure it’s not Bigfoot. The sod is loose and soft around the grate. Bigfoot would leave obvious tracks.

What about extraterrestrials? For example, some people think aliens are behind all the cattle mutilations. Others think it is some ultra-secret government agency running experiments (which have been going on for decades) to see how much nuclear radiation cows are absorbing from all the atomic fracking these bozos are doing to discover more fossil fuel energy resources underground all over the country. They cover their tracks to hide it from the public using the usual conspiracy tools—they just tell enough to investigators who get TV producers to make expose shows about it. They tend to air them in October to make you think this is just all about Halloween. I saw this show on TV last night.

Of course, if the government were doing that, there would be nobody living in the country by now because everybody would be dead from cancer from all the radiation.

But what if the extraterrestrials are trying to steal all the tile drain grates to use them as cooking grills to make barbecued chicken? The only problem is that aliens are so puny, they cannot do more than barely move them off the tile pipe. They get all out of breath and exhausted, which leads to them just giving up and going to a good BBQ joint like Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack in Iowa City.

Where was I? Oh, I need to hire a new guard for the grate now. Obviously the first two bozos were incompetent. The zombie was too busy eating his own armpits and the wolfman started pooping on the grate and clogging up the slots, because even though they may be hundreds of years old, you still cannot potty train them.

And the sword the wolfman carried got stuck in the grate slots, leading to a hernia, the surgery for which veterinarians charge a lot. I could get them from passing zombies, but they are touchy about their stuff.

So, the tile drain grate saga continues. Aren’t you glad?

Update: Sena bought 3 big rocks, the total weight of which might exceed 20 pounds. We set them on top of the grate. And I called the Temp Agency and hired 3 new guards to make sure that grate stays on. Depending on what history you believe, either good things come in threes—or bad things come in threes. We’re going to go with good things.

Day 3: Drain Tile Grate Secure!

Well, it’s day 3 and the drain tile grate has not popped off yet. I secured it with a worm gear adjustable clamp on October 1, 2022.

I had to fire the little zombie I posted to guard it. He was drinking blood on the job, gambling on zombie cribbage with a gang of putrid corpses, and making threats to cancel Halloween based on bogus orders from Dracula.

I hired a wolfman from the temp agency who seems more reliable. He carries a sword although I’m not sure why. His teeth are huge—for such a tiny werewolf. Don’t call him “Tiny” to his face. He has an inferiority complex.

If you laugh at him, he’ll surely shred your shoestrings. Quick, say that three times really fast right now!

Day 1: Drain Grate Intact

So far so good. After I affixed the drain grate to the corrugated base with a worm gear adjustable clamp, this morning the lid is still on.

I also posted a tiny zombie guard. He’ll chew up anything that tries to come up from below or break in from above. He’s not fussy about what he eats. He doesn’t sleep. He’s not scared of anything. Bad weather doesn’t bother him. He says the same thing Beetlejuice says:

“I’ll eat anything you want me to eat, I’ll swallow anything you want me to swallow; so, come on down, I’ll chew on a dog!”