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Bread and Circuses

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Concentrated evil?

Concentrated evil?

In at least one way, I was much better off five years ago than I am today.

Five years ago, I’d never heard the word “gluten.”

Certainly it doth not well become the mouth. Say it with me:

“Gluten.”

 

It’s Latin for “glue”, and sounds like it. Certainly it doesn’t sound like anything I’d want to eat. But eat it I do, and so do you, in forkfuls and fistfuls, in loaf and linguini, by the can, bottle, or on tap. And knowing that has marginally decreased my ability to take pleasure in life’s most necessary pleasure.

When I see something, anything, labeled “gluten-free” my highly suspicious middle temporal gyrus interprets the message as “flavor-free”, or sometimes “satisfaction-free”, and always “interest-free.” By long and painful experience, my finely calibrated taste buds have become convinced that any manner of foodstuff rendered “free” of anything is a giant culinary step down from the same edible composed the way 300 generations of painstaking gastronomic development intended.

Ominous signs

Ominous signs

 

There’s a reason Haiti was once the richest colonial possession in the world – sugar tastes good. Do you really think Napoleon would have diverted three seasoned infantry divisions from his war against the English to protect France’s lucrative Splenda plantations? Likewise, salt is the soul of savory, and without savory there is only brute and bland substance. Did you ever taste salt-free butter? You might as well spread Crisco on your low-carb toast. And I can say with considerable authority that nothing with less fat tastes better than anything with more of it.

I know what you’re thinking.

“If you hate gluten-free food so much, don’t eat any.”

If only it were that simple. The gluten-free fad is a juggernaut consuming everything in its path. To be sure, gluten-deprived foods will never completely replace the endowed kind, but at the rate they’re expanding it’s a dead certainty that I will at some point be fed it without foreknowledge or forewarning, and an otherwise perfectly good meal will be thereby diminished.

Thing is, there’s a large and growing class of people who equate “-free” with “healthy”, as if the mere act of removing something from food makes it somehow superior. I suppose it’s inevitable that one day soon a savvy manufacturer of cardboard products will come out with a line of energy bars, or snack cakes, or artisan loaves, label them “nutrient-free” and within six months become the wealthiest industrialist in the Western Hemisphere. Millions of solid and sober Americans will buy nutrient-free victuals to the exclusion of all others, and they will foist them upon their children, and their friends, and they’ll throw nutrient-free dinner parties for the single purpose of showing off their nutrient-free lifestyle. “Frankly, I think it tastes better than food with nutrients in it,” they’ll smugly smirk, “and I have so much more energy now that I’ve finally cut nutrients out of my diet.”

'Artie' to his friends

‘Artie’ to his friends

 

But please understand – yes, I am very much opposed to gluten-free grub, but no, I’m not a monster. I am familiar with, and sympathetic to, those suffering from celiac disease, a condition first described in the first century A.D. by Aretaeus of Cappadocia. He called it “koiliakos”, from the Greek word “koelia”, meaning “abdomen”, and described sufferers of “Koeliac Affection” thusly:

“If the stomach be irretentive of the food, and if it pass through undigested and crude, and nothing ascends into the body, we call such persons koeliacs.”

It would be nearly 2,000 years before a Dutch physician pinned the intestinal crime on gluten, and another 60 before food manufacturers discovered a way to turn it into even bigger profits.

In simplest terms, celiac disease is an autoimmune condition that results in inflammation of the lining of the small intestine and can lead to a host of digestive and evacuative complaints up to and including malnutrition. It’s triggered by gluten, which is most commonly present in wheat, barley and rye.

According to the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, about 1 in 133 Americans – less than one percent – are so afflicted, and yet as much as 6 percent deem themselves bullied by gluten, and up to 15 percent are regular consumers of gluten-free products. The reason for that may lie in the recent discovery of the lesser related condition of “gluten sensitivity,” which ailment has been gaining popularity at an astonishing rate, almost certainly thanks in part to its endorsement by beautiful people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Victoria Beckham. However, and with all due respect to the lovely Gwyneth, who could no doubt play the role of a doctor or nutritionist most convincingly, gluten sensitivity is a condition still looking for a diagnosis.

 

Modern mythology

Modern mythology

While celiac disease is quickly recognized and easily confirmed by empirical testing, gluten sensitivity is neither. As yet, there exists no way to definitively prove, or disprove, that ill-defined scourge. In fact, according to an essay recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, many people “may experience symptoms when they eat foods containing gluten simply because they believe these foods will make them sick.” Conversely, they may just as easily experience a cessation of symptoms after going gluten-free because they believe their chic new diet can only make them feel better. More clinical research, plus a dose of common sense is needed “to prevent a gluten preoccupation from evolving into the conviction that gluten is toxic for most of the population.”

Then again, nobody ever went broke by underestimating the American capacity for common sense.

Even so, most experts agree that gluten sensitivity is, to some extent, a genuine disorder, and common sense amply backs up that assessment. Students of agriculture will tell you that wheat, barley and rye are grains. Students of history will tell you that for nearly all the long ages of human evolution our furry and fur-clad ancestors subsisted principally on non-glutenous substances like nuts, berries, the occasional auroch and, as circumstances warranted, each other. Fact is, people didn’t start eating grains in meaningful quantities until about 9,000 years ago – a very small tick of the evolutionary clock – and staple grains like wheat and barley didn’t arrive in Europe until the 5th century A. D., which means your Schultzes, Archambaults and O’Learys have had a paltry 1,800 years to adjust to the new dietary regimen. It’s only natural that some modern physiologies continue to resist the change, and, statistically, modern persons of Northern European descent are up to 30 percent more likely to get on the wrong side of celiac disease.

It's what was for dinner

It’s what was for dinner

 

Compounding matters is compounding gluten. Turns out the Great Satan Gluten, a humble protein, is also much beloved by those who eat. Chemically, gluten is utterly benign toward all but the most tender digestive apparatus, and, when used as directed, acts as a natural adhesive that gives bread its elasticity and helps it keep its shape. Gluten is what makes Wonder Bread wondrous. It makes loaves fluffier, bagels stretchier, cinnamon rolls chewier, and gluten is what makes it possible for artisan breads to be sculpted in a dizzying multiplicity of unlikely shapes and textures.

About ten minutes after that magical moment in the 1950s when those mouth-watering properties were ascribed to gluten, American agronomists went on a major – and majorly successful – campaign to boost the gluten content of the nation’s wheat stocks.  These days, nearly every wheat crop in the country derives from those dramatically enhanced strains, and bowels already groaning under the gluten present in wheat’s original internal organization can hardly be expected to approve of the new regime. 

 

The staff of strife
The staff of strife

 

But perhaps you’re misunderstanding me again. You should really try harder to understand me. I do not condemn gluten. Nay, I celebrate it. I’ve never been much for breads and cereals to begin with, and as far as I’m concerned the gluten explosion is solely responsible for making even the finest brioche, boule or baguette worth a single moment of my valuable mouth-time. And, as I think I’ve made abundantly clear, gluten’s growing number of detractors are, in the main, a pack of hyper-impressionable bed-wetters who would swear off vegetables if they read in People magazine that George Clooney sent back a plate of grilled asparagus while dining with friends at Connie and Ted’s.

 

They were a little mushy

They were a little mushy

 My problem with gluten is that I know what it is, and that it’s in my food. And that kind of dietary consciousness is simply foreign to my nature. I don’t need to know what’s in my hot dog to love it, but once the simpering masses start tampering with the recipe I am compelled to unwanted awareness and must take inconvenient pains to ensure I’m getting the essential salts, sugars, fats and gluten necessary to a happy diet.

I will never purchase a gluten free product, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be subjected to one. Witness the relentless gastronomical intrusions of the meatless mob.

As sure as the sun will rise, some ostensible friend will invite me to supper, and I’ll only find out too late that it’s gluten free repast, and they’ll spend the greater portion of the meal describing in self-satisfied detail the great lengths they went to in discovering the recipes and procuring the ingredients for those tasteless dishes, and how critical it is to my continued survival that I follow their good example, and they will insist on writing down their recipe for those gawd-awful gluten-free sesame rolls, and won’t stop hounding me until I promise to make them at home the first chance I get, and I’ll leave with a knot in my stomach and the conviction that gluten-inspired gas, bloating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation couldn’t possibly be worse than the ordeal I’d just undergone.

And it’s only a matter of time until I unwittingly find myself seated in a restaurant next to someone who reveals themselves to be on the gluten-free-wagon, and they’ll ask the waiter about gluten-free choices, and scowl disapprovingly at the relatively few gluten-free menu options, and sigh deeply, and order something they say they don’t really want but are willing to settle for because they “don’t want to make a fuss”, and it will be a special-order requiring an inordinate amount of fuss for the kitchen crew, and when it arrives they’ll wolf it down like it was their last meal, all the while picking off every other plate at the table and loudly extolling the virtues of some other restaurant they like much better that offers a wide variety of super-delicious gluten-free dishes, and I will go home with a mild headache and a bad attitude and ache with longing for the innocent ignorance I’d taken so much for granted just five years before.

And maybe, in my secret heart, and despite its fine and useful properties, my real beef with gluten is that I hate what it does to people.

Mostly me.

disputingluten

 

Litter-ally Speaking

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Litterbug, Litterbug, shame on you!

Look at the terrible things you do!

 

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

I have littered.

The other day I was going hiking with my friend, Bonita, and picked up a bottle of Snapple on the way. The trail was long, steep and rocky, tricky footing most of the way. Up top, I sat down to enjoy some richly-deserved refreshment, and set the Snapple bottle down on what I thought was a nice, even surface. Unfortunately, the surface was neither nice nor even, and the glass bottle fell over and broke. It was a pain, but not a big one, and I carefully picked up the pieces and headed into the trees.

Bonita says “Where are you going?”

I say “To get rid of this glass.”

She says “You’re not going to just dump it in the woods, are you?” It wasn’t really a question, Father.

I say “What do you expect me to do with it?”
“Carry it out,” she says. “You can’t leave it here.”

I say “Well, I’m gonna bury it. In the middle of nowhere. It’ll never turn up again, I guarantee it.”

She says “I can’t believe you’re even considering it.”

I could see Bonita was walking on the edge of violence, and very carefully tried to explain my reasoning.

I say “I guess I shouldn’t have brought a glass bottle, but I did, and now I know better. But if you think I’m going to head back down that lousy trail with a thin nylon day-pack full of razor-sharp glass shards slung on my back, you’re very much mistaken. One slip and I could have a bigger problem than defiling Mother Nature.”

Bonita says “What if a squirrel, or a bird, gets into it? It could kill them!”

My position, Vicar, was that if some chipmunk is stupid enough to eat broken glass, then that would make me a positive agent of Natural Selection.

Ooooh…I’m gonna pay for that one, aren’t I? You do know it was just a figure of speech, and not an endorsement of evolutionary theory, right?

Anyway, I wasn’t about to head down with a pack full of broken glass, and Bonita wasn’t about to let me bury it in the woods, and I was starting to think that one of us wasn’t going to leave that mountaintop alive when Bonita remembered seeing the disintegrating hulk of an old, lidless metal box rusting its way into oblivion a few feet off the trail only a couple hundred yards from where we stood arguing. Sometime, probably years ago, somebody had dropped a pop can into the box, which in Bonita’s mind, apparently, qualified the box as an approved trash receptacle. With her not-too-enthusiastic blessing, I deposited the glass in the box, where it will remain perfectly intact, visible to hikers, and easily accessible to stupid woodland creatures for ages to come. But then, putting the broken glass in the box was never really about doing the best thing under the circumstances, it was about satisfying the modern anti-littering lobby’s manic compulsion to put-it-somewhere.

 

Please understand, Padre, that I don’t like litter any better than any other right-thinking person. You might say I was raised in the Faith – pick up your toys, put away your clothes, throw away your trash. For much of my life, not littering has been more habit than conscious choice.

I guess the first time I gave any real thought to littering was as a young man, when I was fortunate to travel abroad and spend time in foreign parts where folks discard their unwanted surplus with almost child-like spontaneity, and without a hint of public condemnation. I have seen otherwise picturesque streets and plazas virtually buried in trash, and I can tell you it’s a pretty grim picture. Wading through seas of wadded-up newspapers, candy wrappers and plastic beverage containers, I’ve been astonished to wash up against government donation kiosks, drifts of rubbish almost obscuring signs pleading for contributions to help fight the nation’s chronic littering problem.

Was I wrong, Father, not to make a donation? I mean, if Jacomo and Jocasta Q. Publico can’t be bothered to drop their empty Pellegrino bottle in a trash can, I doubt my humble piaster will buy their cooperation.

Forgive me my digression, Father. I only mean that having seen first-hand how rampant littering degrades the common landscape, I had discovered, for the first time in my life, a rational reason to not litter. On the other hand, I also saw for the first time that not everybody considers the offhand scattering of rubbish a crime against civilization, a symptom of moral dissipation, or a brutal rape of Gaea. I guess you could say my general stance on litter, while personally unchanged, was still evolving.

After all, littering is what humans do. From coprolites scattered about an African cave, to llama bones moldering on the Pampas, to shell middens heaped along the Chesapeake, to lakes of stone-chips surrounding the pyramids, to fume-choked Newcastle awash in coal slag, creating waste is nothing more or less than the genetically inevitable byproduct of all human activity. It’s in our DNA. Altering and manipulating the natural world is Mankind’s principle survival mechanism, and both of those processes necessarily generate trash.

I can see you multiplying Hail Marys in your head, Father, but hear me out. 

It’s been my observation that just as humanity’s endless ingenuity produces no end of garbage, its inventive nature and native opportunism never stops finding new and better ways to deal with the mess. More than 90 percent of this country’s industrial waste winds up getting used again, and again, and again, for crying out loud!

Sorry for the outburst, Your Worship, but in this highly complex and diversified economy, one person’s dross is almost always somebody else’s raw material, and it’s cheaper to buy pavement-extender, or fuel, or compost, from a guy who’s got boxcar-loads of it sitting in his back lot than to make it yourself from scratch.

Littering, littering every place,

My, what a disgrace!

 

You make a good point, Father.

No, I’m not really an industry, and not really in the market for worn-out tires, but I’m equally impressed with our culture’s methods for handling non-industrial waste. Most people in this country – except maybe you, Padre – crank out about four pounds of solid waste every day. Subtract for curbside recycling, backyard composting, garage sale-ing and re-gifting, and that still comes to something like 250 million tons of public nuisance every year. Yeah, that is a lot of boxcars, Father, about 3.7 million of them, just in case you were curious, and all that trash winds up attracting crows and coyotes at one of the nation’s 3,091 clean, safe, efficient, and virtually inexhaustible landfills.

Why the disapproving cluck, Padre? That’s a good thing! If you want to know the truth, the miracle of modern trash collection is the real reason I’ve mostly sworn off littering. Let me explain.

To my way of thinking, littering is just the most public manifestation of laziness, or “sloth”, in your professional lingo. Face it, these days you’re rarely more than a few steps from a designated trash receptacle. They’re everywhere, from the mall to the park to the city sidewalks. And if you don’t happen to be next to a trash can at a particular moment, you will be the next time you stop for gas, or groceries, or a crunchy Gordita. And there’s no shame in dumping that Gordita wrapper on the floor in the back seat of your car until you get home, because how many wastebaskets are in your own house? Seriously, Father! How many do you have in the rectory? Oh. I would have guessed more than that. But of course you must be a very tidy person. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, right?

And honestly – in the unlikely event that somebody finds themselves on foot and miles from the nearest garbage bin, what could they possibly have to throw away that won’t fit into their pocket or purse? If they carried it into the wilderness, they can certainly carry it back out again, provided it isn’t bristling with pointy death, or on fire. These days there’s just not much excuse for not dumping your junk in proper fashion, because the responsible disposal of trash has become ridiculously easy and convenient.

Magical, really.

Where is that 250 million tons of trash? You don’t see it. You can’t smell it. It’s just…gone. Properly disposed of, every gum wrapper, every shampoo bottle, every orange peel, every Snapple bottle, simply disappears. That’s because a huge and largely unnoticed army of men and women – taxpaying, family-raising, society-contributing men and women – do nothing for 40 hours a week besides taking care of your four-pound problem. The cigarette butt is whisked away by night; the empty Tender Vittles tins vanish while you’re at your desk; if you don’t have an ant problem, it’s not because you’re some kind of domestic genius, it’s because those well-gnawed hot wings were long gone before the ants got wind of them. And that vast organization, operating 24 hours a day, out of sight and out of mind, is our society’s smooth-running answer to the 500 million cubic yards of garbage we create every year, a volume that works out to something like 5,300 Nimitz Class aircraft carriers no longer harshing our buzz, or 2.3 million Boeing 747s we don’t have to step over to get to the lawn mower, or 314 Saint Peter’s Basilicas stuffed to the rafters with carry-out boxes and soggy coffee filters.

Yes, I thought you’d like that, Vicar.

Okay, okay, I know other sinners are waiting, but here’s the thing – I don’t like litter for the same reason I don’t like vandalism. Something, anything, however humble or mundane, if maintained in its manufactured state is capable of performing its intended function, and is thus a net asset to the world. Break it, and it becomes a problem requiring effort and, probably, money, to be dealt with. The window in the abandoned house is, at very worst, a neutral object that may yet be salvaged to someone’s gain. Throw a rock through it, and it instantly loses any possible value and becomes a hazard to human navigation.

Likewise, the Snapple bottle thrown into the bushes, or the parking lot, or the street, becomes an obstacle to the smooth flow of human intercourse, and an affront to enlightened society. Properly disposed of in a trash can, it becomes part and parcel of that smooth flow, a sterling example of modern enlightenment, a symbol of all that Man can accomplish.

Do you see what I’m getting at, Padre? Simply by not littering, we can all participate directly in what may well be the single greatest achievement in the history of civilization – the American waste disposal system. And, to me, that’s worth the effort.

Abso-what-now?

Absolution! Right! I’m getting to that, Father. I thought priests were supposed to be patient.

Rusty box or no, I definitely littered, and in this day, and in this locality, I know very well that’s a serious moral transgression. And as long as I’m unburdening my soul, you may as well know that one time I drove off with a small stack semi-worthless pamphlets sitting on the roof of my car, which predictably blew off somewhere between Golden and Boulder, and I didn’t go back to find them and dispose of them properly.

It didn’t even cross my mind.

Whew. That felt good.

Does it count that I’ve never littered with malice aforethought? It should, because on those rare occasions that I have abandoned manufactured waste upon the land, I did so with only charity in my heart.

Maybe the devil made me do it, but I’d prefer to think I acted in the best Christian tradition by not risking my own well-being to comply with an irrational zero-tolerance littering policy, nor wasting my time and several gallons of gasoline looking for reading materials that were probably already halfway to Cheyenne. And what about our responsibility to future generations of archaeologists? What about that, Father?

For people like Bonita, and I guarantee your flock is full of them, even the smallest incidence of littering is the greatest evil Men can visit upon the Earth, and no justification exists for it. For me, the cure can sometimes – very rarely, but sometimes – be worse than the disease.

Lord forgive me, Father, but I think I could litter again.

 

It really makes one wonder what kind of house you keep,

When everywhere that you go is your personal garbage heap!

 

Do Not Go Gentle into that Exchange

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or

O Captain! What Happened?!

 

Gazing out upon his realm
He shed a tear of clemency
The ship beneath his stately helm
Was found’ring in
Disparity

Great Lord! went up the plaintive wail
Take pity ‘pon the likes of we!
The healing arts are up for sale,
And we are gripped in
Penury!

The doctors care for naught but gold,
Ignoring our extremity!
Apothecaries have turned cold
Their potions priced
Excessively!

The leech is now a dozen pence
That used to cost ha’penny!
And terminal have grown the rents
On beds at the
Infirmary!

Will not you raise your mighty hand
And with keen sword of just decree
Strike down that avaricious band
And end the reign of
Banditry?

His eyes ignite in righteous fire
His face a mask of empathy
The time of greed will now expire!
You must leave everything
To me!

My subjects need not cringe and bow
For leech and newt and remedy
Nor sell the family milking cow
To pay for plastic
Surgery

The druggists must be brought to heel!
The doctors bridled ruthlessly!
The moneybags my wrath must feel,
And hence foreswear cruel
Usury!

The royal court was roused to act
Advisors pledged on bended knee
The public’s health they made their pact
From greed to set the
People free.

For forty days and forty nights
The quills did scribble fev’rishly
Defying untrod legal heights
To please their sovereign
Majesty

In hoary halls of Parliament
Opponents begged to disagree
Though few’d abide their rude lament
Or countenance such
Villainy

Banks of actuaries spoke
With tables to eternity
And champions of common folk
Demanded blanket
Equity

The counselors had scarce begun
Their obfuscations lawyerly
When special interests joined the fun
A legislative
Jamboree!

The heralds sat on tenterhooks
Predicting easy victory
Said they, Tomorrow’s history books
Will hail the king’s
Sagacity!

Upon a morning bright and fair
An end was made to industry
Anticipation filled the air
The nation waited
Breathlessly

The king addressed the kingdom then
Said he, Good shepherd must I be
and hereby sign, with flowing pen,
This bill to law from
Sea to sea

It was a potent tome, indeed
Encyclopedic, A to Z
Too much, it was, for Man to read
But not too much for
Policy

Within this mammoth document
Resides the answer to your plea
Intoned the conqu’ring President
These pages hold
Security!

Alas, the magic manuscript
Was not as it appeared to be
Slow but sure, the scales were tipped
And rose a great
Disharmony

Among the trusting populace
Suspicion wakened gradually
The parchment fair upon its face
Mandated false
Economy!

Your scheme to tame rampaging costs
Somewhere miscarried grievously!
Our old protections we have lost
New ones compare
Unfavr’ably!

Invoices once paid painfully
Now calculate in agony!
For some, private indemnity
Cannot be had for
Any fee!

Familiar physics, friends of sorts
Would treat us now illegally,
And by way of last resorts
Have only we
Compliancy !

Insult compounding injury
Political efficacy
Allows a glad minority
Exemption with
Impunity!

Despite your smiling guarantee
The future looks like poverty!
O what a brazen treachery
To perpetrate this
Calumny!

The cries were lost upon the king
Who faced the nation tranquilly
I guess I should have read the thing
But pardon your
Effrontery

Among my ministers, it’s true
Are some who disappointed me
They’re not a very clever crew
Deserving of
Antipathy

Take them! Strip them! Bind them fast
Upon your vengeful pillory!
But first look in the mirrored glass
Confront your real
Enemy

You fancied hope, demanded change
And I complied abundantly
So now I find it passing strange
To hear you whining
Bitterly

This plight I long ago defined
In stated ideology
If gentle hand you had in mind
You should have checked my
Pedigree

I do not nurture freedom’s seed
Nor well abide democracy
A king I am in word and deed
Raised up by your
Complacency

It may be true you were misled
My rule may spell catastrophe
But if you must have someone’s head
Remember who
Elected me

The Ghosts of Halloween Past

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The ancient Halloween custom of Trick-or-Treat seems to have fallen out of favor.

The fashion these days seems to be to be the Halloween Party.

Lots of churches hold Halloween Parties, and a few clubs, and no few Highly-Engaged parents. The basic premise is that, instead of wandering the darkened streets, kids dress up in store-bought costume and sit around in a large, noisy, well-lit rooms gorging on Safeway cupcakes and getting cherry Kool-aid all over their rented outfits. Call me crazy, but that sounds a lot like every kids birthday party I ever attended, and not particularly spooky.

Another growing alternative to traditional Trick-or-Treat is that of the mini-mall variety. Instead of wandering around the darkened streets, kids get to march down straight, noisy, well-lit sidewalks and gather discount treats from merchants. Maybe I’m missing something, but accompanying my parents to the grocery store doesn’t seem to jibe with the holiday’s profound mystery. And note to merchants: Any coupon, even one for free stuff, is not a “treat”, it’s a marketing trick.

One espoused benefit of the Halloween Party/Mall Crawl vis-a-vis genuine Trick-or-Treating is that they provide secure environments in which childrens’ intake and behavior can be more easily monitored and controlled. Another is that, because the events are narrowly scheduled, participation can be more easily penciled into parents’ day-planners. Most often cited, however, is the perceived safety to be found in large numbers, tightly confined. Safety is, after all, the greatest of the modern virtues.

It’s also a shame.

When I was a kid, Trick-or-Treat was Halloween.

Sure, then as now, that curious holiday is a mental process that begins with the bone-deep thrill that comes when you see the season’s first TV commercial featuring a Jack-o-Lantern, or a vampire bat. But the thrill I felt was not rooted in anticipation of bobbing for apples or standing in line in front of Radio Shack, but on the vivid memory of Halloween Night, the strangeness of being outside, alone after dark, the weird anonymity I felt, and the excitement of blood-curdling possibilities that I utterly believed could happen, but didn’t really believe ever would.

Halloween should be macabre, not manufactured. Trick-or-Treat is Halloween on a kids’ own terms. On that night, after the sun went down and the Jack-o-Lanterns came out, I was filled with a delicious, giddy apprehension. All the weird and horrid things that seemed like excellent fiction the rest of the year suddenly seemed plausible, even probable.

On Halloween Night, the universe was off its plumb. Quiet neighborhood streets were haunted by the unseen, the cavernous shadows between homes populated by imaginations running on over-drive. Neighbors’ houses I knew very well became mansions of menace, each one watched over by short, squat demons whose breath carried the secret smell of scorched pumpkin. Pressing the doorbell took a mischievous kind of courage one could only feel on Halloween, and there was an odd thrill of triumph each time a friendly grown-up opened the door and presented candy instead of drooling fangs.

It was all just make-believe, and we knew it. But it was also very real, and we knew that, too.

Even today I can’t catch a whiff of burning pumpkin without flashing back to little knots of my costumed contemporaries appearing out of the darkness, and disappearing back into it just as quickly; to housewives wearing witches’ hats and door handles festooned with fake cobwebs; to scary records playing on outdoor speakers somewhere across the valley; to demonic flaming eyes glaring down from porches set back among the trees, luring me to certain destruction, or maybe a full-sized candy bar, or maybe something in between.

Anything could happen. It never did, but it could, and that was a powerful difference.

Halloween was special because it wasn’t just a party, and it wasn’t just free candy, and it wasn’t just TV Jack-o-Lanterns and rubber vampire bats. It was a nightmare come to life, but one that unfolded along known lines and could be met, and mastered, by a child without the interference of adults.

Removed from malls and multi-purpose rooms, Trick-or-Treat is the imagination set free, terror on a leash, your darkest and dearest dreads pressing up against a thin, black curtain. It is fear, and enchantment, and independence, and discovery.  It’s the beating heart of Halloween, and without it the holiday is a tame and toothless affair.

And that’s a shame.

Mountain Macabre – Taking a walk on Morrison’s weird side

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Like many a small, Western town, Morrison wears much of its pioneering history on its face. Basking in the golden light of late afternoon, picturesque brick storefronts, rusty, weed-bound rail beds and moldering sheds, shacks and shanties bespeak the town’s busy, sometimes boisterous past. But night falls swiftly over that comfortable wedge of clapboard and sandstone bounded by high, rugged hills and, with the dark, a less casual, more secretive aspect is revealed. And revealing Morrison’s dark secrets is the not-too-serious purpose of the Morrison Haunted History Tour.

Forays into the town’s spectral dimension, hosted almost nightly during the witching season, are the province of Colorado Haunted History, a semi-formal partnership of three young ghost-hunters with a shared fancy for phantoms. Complete strangers at the time, Monica Ferrel, Renee Nellis and Joel Chirhart took the Morrison tour several years ago with spirit guides Dee Chandler and Beaux Blakemore. They soon became fast friends and, when Chandler and Blakemore decided to lay down their spectral chains two years ago, took on the frightful, delightful burden themselves. Of course, all three have day jobs since leading ghost tours is a precarious vocation, at best.

“It’s a hobby, really,” Ferrel says. “We all love ghosts. You know, ‘are they real?’” This is as much fun for us as it is for them.”  During the last couple years, Colorado Haunted History has hunted apparitions from Wyoming to New Mexico but, supernaturally speaking, they found pay dirt in Colorado.

Haunted

“We like to say that Morrison is the most haunted town in America, per capita,” Chirhart said, a plausible statement about a town of 450 (breathing) souls living amid the residue of 150 years of psychic turmoil. Still, Chirhart and his associates try to edify while they terrify. “It’s not just ghosts,” he says. “We try to give a lot of other interesting history about Morrison.” The town’s ghostly character, he admits, is based largely on anecdotal evidence and, while the partners’ researches have yielded little hard evidence of howling wraiths, they’ve uncovered plenty of salty morsels about Morrison’s unruly founders.

With reservations (the formal-arrangement kind, not the sensible, I-don’-wanna-see-no-ghost kind), the ghoulish trio will lead a tour in any season, but October is boom-time in the spook trade and nearly two dozen fearless metro-area citizens gathered at Morrison’s war memorial Thursday night, keen to sample the town’s spooky fare. It was a hardy crowd – sadistic parents escorting youngsters who just knew they were about to shake hands with a dancing skeleton, blissful lovers for whom the clubs on the 16th Street Mall are just too scary, and older couples who were going for a walk anyway and figured downtown Morrison was as good a place as any. Oh, and there were some gals wearing red hats.

Pre-haunted

“These are the ladies of Chapeau Rouge,” said a moderately dignified woman wearing a bright red cape and crown, “and I am their queen.” You know your tour is going places when royalty shows up. Though her majesty did not deign to explain how she came to lead her chapter of the Red Hat Society, she graciously disclosed her imperial moniker. “I’m Queen Cleora,” she said, proudly. Then, winking, “that’s Cleopatra without the ‘pat,’ if you know what I mean.” Alas, your magnificence, I do not know what you mean, and it is my fervent hope that I never do.

Shortly after 7 o’clock, following a brief recounting of Morrison’s 150-year-old origins, the three escorts led the group away from the relative security of the lighted street, across a narrow bridge and into the sinister, woody darkness beyond. Ancient cottonwoods loomed menacingly overhead, fallen leaves slushed mutely underfoot, and Bear Creek whispered like the furtive conversations of restless shades. It would have been absolutely terrifying if it weren’t so delicious.

After a short walk on a gravel drive, the party collected at the Horton House Bed & Breakfast, a charming, sprawling, pink clapboard manor and one of Morrison’s oldest structures. The inn’s densely-wooded yard teems with sculpted figures and artful trellises that, in daylight, give the property a friendly, occupied appearance. On a moonless night, by wavering lantern-light, they produce an eerie confusion of stealthy, three-dimensional shadows. In the late 19th century, Nellis explained, the lodge was home to a young woman named Amy whose passions included demon rum and crippling depression. Amy hung herself in the carriage house behind the lodge and, according to local lore, now drifts aimlessly through the rooms and corridors of Horton House, a benign, though sometimes mischievous, presence and a regular topic of conversation over crepes.

Definitely haunted

Ambling through downtown, it seems every one of Morrison’s celebrated restaurants and bars carries its own spectral freight, a convenience that allowed Chirhart, Ferrel and Nellis to provide a lot of town history without wandering off topic. Red Rocks Grill, Morrison Inn and the Morrison Holiday Bar are all said to be infested with unquiet dead, though patrons are rarely the target of ghostly pranks. In nearly every case, the bartenders – hard working professionals who diligently perform an honorable office and merit only the highest praise and gratitude – bear the brunt of phantom displeasure.

One extreme example deals with the angry spirit of a young girl purportedly murdered long ago in the building that currently houses Tony Rigatoni’s. Animated by hatred for all manly people, she is said to ambush passing Mars-type barkeeps with a small, swinging gate, vindictively focusing her attacks on their poorly armored nether regions. Now, that’s scary.

Totally haunted

To hear the guides tell it, Morrison’s north side is replete with haunted localities. Custodians flatly refuse to enter the old Town Hall after dark, they say, and two phantoms of indeterminate identity and motivation play havoc with the inventory and wiring at Lacy Gate’s Antiques.

Of course, in a town as haunted as Morrison, some ghosts are forced to visit terror in less comfortable surroundings. Witness the haunted stump, a twisted, gray remnant of the town’s “hangin’ tree” slowly rotting into oblivion in a dark corner of a dirt parking lot. There are some, Renee assured Queen Cleora, who will not traverse the lot after sundown, lest they attract the stump’s malicious attentions. A hundred yards away, historic Cliff House is said to be the eternal abode of a young man who, like poor Amy, hung himself in the barn. Why he would hang himself in a smelly old barn when a perfectly good tree was available for that specific purpose is an enduring mystery.

Hangin' haunted

Hella haunted

The summit of the high ridge defining Morrison’s northern edge features a long row of sharp, uneven stones, like witches teeth. Atop that menacing crest, legend says, the troublesome Ute chief named Colorow can sometimes be seen on moonlit nights, silhouetted against the sky. Also, up there somewhere, the Hatchet Lady of Red Rocks bides her wicked time, waiting to take an ax to disobedient children who meander near her foul cave. According to local myth, she is naked when she dismembers her misbehaving prey, proving that folklore can satisfy every taste.

The Morrison Haunted History Tour, an enjoyable combination of history, humor and horror, wound up at 8:30, but could have easily gone longer. Despite the spine-tingling October chill, nobody was in a hurry to leave, not even when an eerie wail arose from the dense, dark hollow along Bear Creek. “It’s probably just a raccoon,” Queen Cleora said, valiantly maintaining her royal composure while the blood drained from her face. That’s right, a harmless raccoon, nothing more.

Haunted, haunted, haunted...

It was surely no accident that the party broke up next to Red Rocks Grill. After the last tourist had disappeared into the night, Chirhart, Ferrel and Nellis went inside for a richly-deserved nightcap. Hopefully, they remembered to tip the bartender.

 

 

 

 

www.coloradohauntedhistory.com.