Halloween PSL

A guest post by Blair Stringam. 

It was Halloween and I was the mature age of 12. 

Too old to go house to house for treats.

So my friends and I were down on main street in our small town, trying to figure out how much mischief we could get into without it being too much.

We were likely remembering the stories of Halloweens past when our older siblings got thrown into our local jail and then broke out (a great story that Diane has told).

We were trying to find our own unique expression of mischief when some kids from our group thought of hauling junk from the back alleys and piling it in the middle of main street.

A really good idea (NOT!).

Two of my hockey buddies and I went into the back alley and found a large, empty wooden spool. We thought it would be a great candidate for our growing pile.

Now I should point out here that said spool probably weighed 200 lbs. or more so the only way for us to move it was to get it rolling.

Which we did.

When we neared our growing ‘art project’ (we were enlightened in our small town!) we thought simply adding the spool seemed a bit boring. So we decided we would wheel the spool up the street to the north. There was a slight slope and we thought it would be great to let the spool roll down the street and crash into our collection.

Once we pushed the spool up the street about 400 yards, we let it go.

The spool slowly started rolling.

About then, we assumed that we wouldn’t get the spectacular crash that we hoped for, so we started pushing.

The spool really started to pick up speed/momentum and we could see that the weight of it was going to provide a spectacular crash when it hit our community youth art project. However, as the spool got closer, I realized it was starting to veer off to one side.

It was heavy and moving fast by this time and I couldn’t figure out how to steer it back to our intended target.

Sure enough, when the spool arrived at our sculpture, it just skimmed the side and continued down the street.

We stared in horror. It was now headed for a muscle car sporting an amazing paint job that belonged to one of the guys who worked on the local oil rigs and who was presently imbibing at the local bar.

At this point, I realized we were in a great deal of trouble. The spool had picked up quite the momentum. My two buddies were not making any effort to try to help.  Perhaps they were just as surprised as me.

I ran down to the spool and tried to stop it. But it had too much momentum. There was no way I could, even if I (ouch) stood in front of it.

I decided to try to give the spool a hockey hip check. I bent my knees and pushed my hip into the side of the spool as hard as I could.

Remember where I said the spool weighed about 200 lbs? I weighed about 120 lbs. Soaking wet. And holding an anvil.

I bounced lightly off the side like a gnat.

However, I did manage to alter its trajectory.

It was once more running down the center of the street.

Some of my hockey buddies joined me and we were able to (finally) slow it down and stop it.

We then rolled it back to our sculpture and tipped it over.

Once, I was sure that the spool was not going to cause any unscheduled modifications to the motor vehicles, I went home to bed.

I may have not had the wild Halloween story to tell like my older siblings, but at this point I was too emotionally drained to care.

Halloween is hard.