The Haunted Gully of Abbeville

It was the late 1800’s, a lonely inventor lived secluded in the woods of what would one day be the small town of Abbeville, Mississippi. He was a brilliant man and invented many amazing things but lacked the creativeness to give them good names. It was this weakness and his refusal to seek help that held him back and never allowed his inventions to gain acceptance. Up until this date in history his inventions were mocked and ridiculed. Turns out this date would be no different.

He rode into town with a smile on his face and a wagon load of small rubber duck shaped toys he called Phony Ducks. Surely these would bring joy to the children of the town and he would finally be accepted and make his mark on history. But the town’s people thought that Phony Ducks was a stupid name for a toy and once again laughed him out of town. Convinced that the world was not ready for such a technologically advanced toy he buried his wagon load of small rubber duck shaped toys and then disappeared.

Just two short years later Bryn Shaffer came up with the same concept, called her invention the Rubber Duck, and has been making bath time fun for kids for more than 100 years now.

Fifty years later the recluse inventor showed back up with an invention that could change the world forever. He had figured out how to split atoms and in turn had invented the world’s strongest bomb. He called it The Glowy Bomb of Doom. But the town’s people thought that was a stupid name for a bomb and once again laughed him out of town.

Again, just two short years later the Manhattan Project discovered the same principle, named it the Atomic Bomb and ended World War II.

Dismayed over his lack of invention naming skills he vowed never to invent again and went to bury his Glowy Bomb of Doom in the same location as his Phony Ducks. It was a cold October evening and a full moon lit up the sky. Upon arriving at the location he found that Indians had used it as a ceremonial burial ground during the years he was gone. With complete disregard to the known dangers of burying things on top of Indian burial grounds he buried the Glowy Bomb of Doom there anyway and once again disappeared this time never to be seen again.

Over the years the radioactive goo from his Glowy Bomb of Doom seeped down through the earth and released the angered spirits of the Indians buried there. Those spirits entered into the Rubber Ducks and now haunt that very spot every year on the night of October’s Full Moon.

If you’re brave and adventurous you can go out this Saturday on the Full Moon and watch for their iridescent radioactive glow and listen for their soft squeaks.

And if you’re a good neighbor you’ll bring your rifle and help me eradicate these pesky glow-in-the-dark ducks once and for all.

Glow-In-The-Dark Rubber Duck Shoot (Rim-fire Rifle Competition)

Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010

Time: Sight in @ 6:00pm / Competition @ 7:00pm (after dark)

What to bring: Sense of Adventure, rim-fire rifle (i.e. 22lr, 17hmr… there will be plenty there if you don’t have one)

Cost: $5 to cover the cost of the rubber ducks and ammo

Fun for the Kids or Threat to the American Way of Life

The migration has been happening for as long as I can remember; always sometime around April. You walk out in the yard one day and there they are…everywhere…up in trees, in tuffs of grass, behind the gutter spout, sometimes even hiding inside of bushes – then the next day…gone. Nobody knows for sure where they come from or where the survivors of the kid raid go.

Officially, we don’t really know what they are. Unofficially, we call them Easter Eggs. They were given the name “Easter Eggs” because their migration occurs around the same time as Easter every year and they have a shape very similar to that of an egg. But their shape is where the similarities end. Unlike the egg with its white shell and runny insides that taste good fried the “Easter Egg” has a multi-colored shell and its guts (when not completely void of guts) resemble small candy bars, bubble gum and sometimes even…jelly beans.

Because of the eagerness of children to eat candy bars, bubble gum and…jelly beans, they have been led to believe that the yearly migration is meant especially for them. We release our children in hordes to find, capture and devour entire colonies of “Easter Eggs” in a matter of moments. These “Easter Eggs” seemingly pose no real threat. Their poor hiding skills and bright colors make them easy to find. And their poor reaction time and lack of situational awareness allow the kids to easily sneak up on them, snatch them up and trap them in meager baskets full of fake grass to later be torn open revealing their sweet, tasty insides. Meanwhile we just sit back and watch the massacre never carrying to wonder about the truth of the “Easter Egg” and never taking the time to ensure that the kid raid left no survivors…and there are survivors…there are always survivors.

Each year more and more “Easter Eggs” make the migration and each year more and more survive the raid. “My kids find most of them”, “There can’t be more than one or two missing”, “How harmful can a couple of sneaky plastic eggs be?” – I’ll tell how harmful they can be! Sure, your kid may only miss one or two…but so does the neighbors kid…and so does the kid down the street…and his second cousin twice removed…before you know it there are dozens of “Easter Eggs” evading capture and residing illegally inside your neighborhood. Multiply this by every neighborhood in the country duplicated year after year after year and it begins to get very scary.

These “Easter Eggs” are silently taking over our country! Before you know it they’ll be taking our jobs, draining our social security benefits and stealing our women! Go ahead and ignore the threat and one day you’ll pick up the phone to call a support line and have to press “1” to not talk “Easter Egg”!

“They aren’t all bad, they just want to make a better life for themselves,” you might say. And I might answer, “Are you insane? They’re plastic! What kind of better life could they have?” Even if only a small portion of this invading force has evil intentions, that’s still a lot of bad eggs. So you can bury your head in the sand and pretend like this is no big deal if you want but when you wake up one April morning to find young Timmy laid out in the yard with chocolate all over his face and an Easter basket smashed over his head surrounded by a bunch of evil elliptical plastic invaders covered in tattoos and wearing scary looking bandanas, don’t come crying to me.

Me? I choose to fight back! I refuse to sit back and watch these synthetic fowl progeny destroy the country I love. This is a matter of National Defense. The Easter Egg Hunt is no longer a game for children; it is time for the men of this great nation to step up and defend its borders. No longer will we sit indolently by setting our children out to take care of a job that should have been taken care of long ago. It is time to stand! Stand with me brethren! Take up arms and push back the approaching hordes! As individuals we don’t stand a chance, but as a nation we can push back this annual invasion and once again reclaim our borders. Years from now our grandchildren will read of our bravery in the history books and talk proudly of how their granddaddy stood up for what he knew was right and blew those little plastic oval invaders to smithereens.

April will no longer be the month of the invasion – it will be the month of our independence!

Awakening

I haven’t experienced it lately but I used to have this regular dream about falling. The total dream lasted less than even a second…really more of a feeling than an actual dream. It felt as if not only my bed but the whole world was suddenly ripped out from under me. Laying there in bed my body would jump startling me awake – never an impact. Eyes wide open, now wide awake, heart racing like I’d just looked under the bed to realize the boogey man was in fact under there; I’d spend the next fifteen minutes struggling to rejoin the unconscious.

In the moments after while coaxing myself back to sleep I often wondered why the dream was so frightening to me. Heights have never bothered me – I’ve dangled my toes off the edge of the Grand Canyon, arms spread wide and felt overwhelming freedom but no fear. Falling doesn’t bother me – I’ve jumped from bridges fifty feet above the water, repelled off high cliffs and anxiously await the day I can put a check in the box next to free-fall sky diving. But then the saying goes – it’s not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop at the end.

There are several interpretations of falling dreams most of them involving some sort of insecurity, lack of control or fear. Then again there is also an interpretation that says that these are archaic memories from the time when we were tree-dwelling monkeys. The ape-men that survived their fall passed on their genes with the memory of the event. The dead ones did not. And that’s why so often you dream of falling but of never hitting the ground. Other interpretations range from an upcoming monetary loss to informing you that someone has lied about you – the later if in your dream you fall into mud. Judging by the facts that I don’t fall into mud in my dreams, I’ve never had enough money to worry about losing and I’m pretty certain my granddad wasn’t a monkey; my recurring dream probably had something to do with an insecurity or feeling of lack of control.

I haven’t had the dream lately. Maybe it’s because I’ve begun to relinquish control…If I give up control I no longer have to fear losing it. This past year I’ve felt just like in my dream that the entire world has been torn out from under me and I’m now in a free fall from so high that the ground isn’t even in view yet. At first I was panicked trying desperately to find a way to slow the fall, deploy a parachute or at least find something soft to land on. But now I think I’m starting to enjoy it. I’m no longer flailing around wildly tumbling end over end. I’m now steady; arms freely out to the side, legs tucked behind me, big wind-forced flappy smile on my face. Although I can’t see where I’m falling, I’m not falling blindly. God is in control…he always has been. I know there is a chute on my back it’s just not time for it to open yet. If I can resist the urge to pull the cord and take over I’ll get there much faster and with much less risk of being blown off course during a parachute slowed, personally controlled decent. So here’s to enjoying the free fall and not being a financially challenged, tree-dwelling ape-man with mud on his face.