Chili, Candy, and Cousins

When our kids were little, one of our favorite Halloween traditions was trick-or-treating in Riverside with their cousins.

Dave's mom always had her large iron soup pot full of chili. We'd join Dave's brother Eric and sisters there early for dinner, then get the kids into their costumes and hit the streets.

Since we were in the neighborhood where they grew up, Dave and Eric often stopped to chat with former neighbors and show off their kids. ("See Batman over there? He's mine, and the S.W.A.T. team guy, and the princess.")

During the early years, I wondered at the wisdom of choosing Riverside, since all of the bungalows have five or six steps up to the porch. My job was helping the littlest one keep up with the others. Often the big kids were racing to the next house by the time the toddler got to the steps.

We knew that the house two doors down from Aunt Julie would have the spooky display, and the bravest would reach into the coffin to get the candy (the mechanical rat that had a motion sensor nearly sent me over the edge). And there was the house further down on Coolidge that gave out hot dogs and cans of pop. We were always full from chili so we never had hot dogs, but sometimes a drink was nice.

2006 was Janet's last Halloween. Aunt Julie has assumed chili-making duties some of the years, as she will tonight. Our kids are too old to trick-or-treat, although they still will. Let the fun begin.

Halloween 2001- Cousin Betsy with cat ears, Laurel as a cow (her trick was to say "moo") Cousin Kelsey as Josie and the Pussycats, Caleb as a dinosaur (costume handmade by Aunt Julie for Nathan and passed down to us), and Harrison as a knight in shining armor.

Halloween 2003- Laurel is a princess, Harrison as Batman, Kelsey as the Scream character, Caleb as a S.W.A.T. team guy.

 

 

 

 

Halloween 2005- Laurel as a puppy, Cousin Betsy as a pincess, Caleb and Harrison as Freedom Fighters (uncle Kurt hooked them up with fatigues and ammo boxes) and Cousin Kelsey as a basketball player.

Halloween 2006- Our last Halloween with Grandmother (wish I would have a picture of her with the kids) Harrison as a girl (his football coaches loved this picture!) Laurel as the Lady of Shalott (easier to say than Guinevere), and Caleb as the FBI.

Kansas Cyclops

One of the most surprising comments at my 25th high school class reunion this summer came from someone who wasn't in our class. Debbie (Penner) Kroeker was in the class ahead of us but married Jeff Kroeker in our class. They are teaching and coaching in Douglass, and she told me she uses one of my stories as a writing example each year!

Back when I was at Hillsboro High, Debbie's mom, Carolyn Penner, was the freshman English teacher. Most everyone grumbled about the journals she made us write in throughout the year, but I, of course, loved it. For the mythology unit she had us write our own myths. I wrote a little story about Kansas cyclops. Now I remember Mrs. Penner asking me for a copy of it and a few other pieces I wrote. Apparently she included it in her unit materials and eventually passed them on to her daughter.

Debbie, who I believe teaches 5th grade, says she has to remind her students that the sample story was written by a high school student, so they aren't intimidated instead of inspired.
I knew I saved my freshman journal, and I've been curious to see exactly what it was I wrote. This week I dragged the file box out of the closet and found it. Here it is, typing verbatim:

Kansas Cyclops
By Karen Epp, age 15, freshman at Hillsboro High School

A very long time ago, when the world was brand new, little creatures called cyclops lived in Olympus. There were hundreds and thousands of them and they roamed about that gloriously bright place wherever the wished.

Now these cyclops weren't barbarous giants like the cyclops you may have read about in the Odyssey. However, they were mischievous. Their favorite pasttime was pulling pranks on the gods. These one-eyed creatures particularly loved shiny and bright things.

Now, the sun god's rays were the brightest things in all of Olympus, so the cyclops were always stealing them. The sun god grew very angry and planned to banish the bothersome creatures to earth. To make sure they never stole anything again, he decided he would turn them into plants.

However, the cyclops found out his plan. They knew they would not be able to go against the immortal sun god's will, but they couldn't bear the thought of going to the dark and dismal world without their bright rays, so they stole as many of the sun god's rays as possible and hid them in their mouths.

The sun god finally got permission from Zeus to banish them so he rounded all of them up and sent them down to earth. He hadn't realized, however, that they still possessed some of his sun beams.

On earth the cyclops did turn into plants as the god had planned. They were bare-looking weeds with huge rough leaves and one brown staring eye at the top of the stalk. The cyclops hated the cold earth and put their stolen rays around their eye to warm them.

Yet, they wanted to return to the heavens and still today you can see the plant-cyclops looking up to the sun god, always watching and following his path across the sky, imploring him to grant their return.

Of course, you may better know them as sunflowers.