Halloween humor taught George Jefferson a lesson for life

Our contributor for this page doesn't talk much, except to say that his halloween humor kind of needs to get out there NOW. He is ninety-three years old, hoping to make ninety-four, and he figures seeing his verse in print will be a nice treat.

We are more than happy to help.

He did want to make one other thing clear: George Jefferson is his real name, and he had it long before that there TV show. In fact, he had it long before that there TV.

Outhouses were more common than inside toilets by far. Now, of course, if we see one at all, it is usually ready to fall down.

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I'm an old man now, but I do recall
The year I turned thirteen
One night I slipped right out of the house
In the middle of Halloween
I didn't have much, but I had the spark
Just looking for a little fun
By the time I made it from the farm to town
I was far from the only one

We were a gang of boys all mischief-bent
Didn't mean what it does today
The pranks we pulled were chuckled at
Though our Moms would often pray
We'd all heard and seen it done
Tipping over a working outhouse
This year was the year we'd have our turn
Turn and turn about

Picking places to do our thing
Was half of the total glee
Of course we avoided our own homes
To avoid the razor strap, you see
But mean old men were pretty fair game
Not to mention every cocky fool
Who thought the town deserved to look down
At us farm boys, so uncool

We had tipped three over in an hour or less
But we just had to find one more
We all agreed to hit Old Man Sneed
Who ran the local grocery store
He'd caught my friend stealing candy once
Gave him a different cane
And when he ratted to my friend's dad
My buddy got more of the same

It all went well in the black of the night
The outhouse went down with a crash
That's when we suddenly realized
We might have been a little too rash
In the dark we'd picked on the wrong building
It was not the place with the two-holer seat
But the shed where Old Man Sneed kept kerosene
Stacked on shelves as high as six feet

Some of the stuff was kept in cans
But others in big jars made of glass
Quite a few of them broke and splashed us good
The smell just would not pass
By the time we'd all paid in sweat and tears
Plus repentant essays in seventh grade
We heard the grown men laugh but we never did
I can't stand kerosene to this day!

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Publisher's note: When I grew up on a western Montana ranch a few decades after George's time, there were still outhouses around. For example, we had one for the hired hands to use. They slept in a bunkhouse some distance from the main house, and we did not share our single indoor toilet with them.

Even so, I had no chance for a halloween humor incident to match George's life changing experience. We lived six miles from town, and besides, a mouse could not have sneaked out of that house without Mom knowing.

If you have an original clean halloween humor tale to tell, do feel free to pass it on to us. We wouldn't want George's page to feel lonely.

Thanks for reading,

Fred

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