“Holy cow,” Uncle Spud mumbled as he sat on the back porch, soaking up sunshine and doing maintenance on his spurs. “Tomorrow is Halloween. I almost forgot.”
“Yea,” I agreed. “It’s easy to forget Halloween now that they put Christmas decorations out in mid-October.”
“So what are you going to be for Halloween this year?” Spud asked with a wry little smile. “Are you going to dress up and be somebody, or what?”
“I think I’ll just be me,” I said. “That’s scary enough for most folks in town. How about you?”
“I think I’ll do something different this year,” he said. “Last year I was a drunk. The year before that I was a jerk. And the year before that I was a jailbird. I got arrested in Tucson for vagrancy.”
“No kidding,” I replied. “I didn’t think they arrested people for vagrancy anymore. We’re supposed to be tolerant and compassionate toward street people who make their living panhandling and ‘working’ the welfare system.”
“I was wearing the wrong costume,” Spud smiled. “My Gucci cowboy boots and expensive Stetson hat gave me away.”
“Costumes are important if you’re going to con the citizens,” I agreed.
“So this year I thought I might dress up as somebody else for Halloween,” he said. “Do you have any suggestions?”
“Yes,” I said. “The possibilities are endless. For instance, if you could find a mask with two faces, you could go trick or treating as Orrin Hatch. The senator’s office will tell you that he doesn’t support amnesty for illegal aliens, but then he voted for the ‘Dream Act,’ which is the stealth version of amnesty. No one can be sure who Hatch is anymore, so any faces on the mask would be okay.”
“Or, you could put some egg on your face and go as the Utah state legislature. For ten years they’ve fought the possibility of a 100-acre nuclear waste dump on the Goshute Indian reservation in the sand flats near Nevada, a million miles from anywhere. It’s something the tribe desperately needs to lift their people out of poverty. ‘No nuclear material on Utah’s roadways,’ and ‘over my dead body,’ has been the war cry from the state capital. And now those same anti-nuke knuckleheads are proposing the possibility of not one, but two nuclear power plants for Emery County. The great white fathers speak with forked tongues. Whoda thunk?”
“Or, for your Halloween costume, you could wear a hard hat and cover your smirk with coal dust and go as governor Huntsman. Since all of the TV cameras showed up for the hearings, he seems to be an expert on coal mining.”
“Or, you could get a short dress, a dark wig, and a couple of guys in tuxedos to carry you around on a stretcher, and go as a fainted Marie Osmond.”
“Or, you could get an ‘I hate George Bush’ lapel pin, a suitcase, a big pouty frown and a horse biscuit to kick down the road, and go as departing Salt Lake City mayor, Rocky Anderson.”
“Or, you could get a striped jumpsuit, a set of handcuffs, and a couple of pre-teen girls in wedding dresses to follow you around, and go as Warren Jeffs.”
“Good grief,” the Spudster sputtered. “I don’t think I want to be any of those people, even for Halloween.”
“Well then, you had better just stay home and let the little ghosts and goblins come to you,” I said.
“Kids don’t come to the house anymore,” he said. “They do what is called ‘trunk or treating.’ People hand out goodies from the trunks of their cars in school and church parking lots. It’s safer that way.”
“So shut up and get in the trunk,” I said. “With that spare tire hanging over your belt, you’ve got the perfect costume.”
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