Halloween And Outhouses Poem by Raymond Farrell

If reality
Was not stranger than fiction
Life wouldn't be half
As entertaining as it is at times
Years ago
In the rural areas
It was a common prank
Halloween night
To tip over
People's outhouses
And all the more exciting
If you caught someone
In the outhouse
When you tipped it over
By 1971
Everyone in the country
Including my great uncle Willie
Had indoor plumbing
But still a few outhouses
Could be seen
In the villages
And throughout the countryside
Uncle Willie still had his
And every now and then
For no apparent reason
He would use it
Which he decided to do
On Halloween night 1971
I was at home that night
When I got a frantic
Incoherent call
From my great aunt
I didn't understand
Half of what she said
But I clearly heard the words
Come quick
So I got in the car
And drove over
Within the span of 5 minutes
My uncle and two cousins arrived
We were escorted
To the back yard
Where Uncle Willie
Was trapped in his outhouse
Which had been tipped over
Onto its door
The four of us righted the outhouse
And Willie
Who was usually a placcid, easy going fellow
Emerged
And uttered a string of words
Most of which cannot be found
In any dictionary
Bridged or Unabridged
Or in the church hymnal
He sang from
Every Sunday morning
My uncle was highly empathetic
Which seemed to pacify him
Momentarily
Until my cousins
Unable to contain themselves
Both bent over in hysterical laughter
Which set Willie
Off on another tirade
Things eventually settled down
And we were sitting in the kitchen
Having tea and cookies
When Willie swore he was
Going to get even next Halloween
My uncle said
Now Willie
You'll not be sitting out there
With a shotgun
Shooting some kid
For tipping over your outhouse
Willie replied
I'll not do that
But I'm definitely going to think of something

Over the next year
I thought no more of the matter
Until a year later
Two weeks before Halloween
On a hot Indian Summer Saturday
I got a call from Uncle Willie
Come over and give me a hand
Was all he said
Over I went
To find a whole crew assembled
They'd pushed the outhouse forward
And deepened the hole
Willie had gone over to Ferguson's
And got some pig manure
Which was thrown in
Along with some fish guts
To add to the excrement
That was already there
A toxic mixture was made
By adding water
Until the slop
Took on the consistency
Of a thick batch of molasses
When the mixing was done
Willie said
I'll let that sit
In the open sun
Until Halloween day
Then I'll camoflage the hole
You're all invited over
Halloween for turkey dinner
And then we'll play cards

Come Halloween evening
Everyone parked their car in the village
And walked out to Willie's
We had a good turkey dinner
With all the trimmings
And settled into playing cards
Pat Ryan who wrote the village gossip column
That appeared in the local town papers
Came by with a camera
Just in case something
News worthy might happen
The kitchen blinds were drawn
But the windows were wide open
And just before 10 o'clock
All bedlam broke loose
We all ran out
To see what had happened
And there in the slop
Were the two Gertz brothers
The older one was almost 19
And had gone in up to his chin
The younger shorter one
Had clearly gone in over his head
Pat Ryan started snapping pictures
As they extricated themselves from the hole
Minus their rubber boots
Pat said I'm going to tell Mrs. Gertz
What's been going on
Uncle Willie said
Be sure and come back
And tell us what happens

The Gertz family arrived in the area
In the early 1900s from Germany
But Mrs Gertz herself
Came directly from Germany
They ran a combination
General store and restaurant business
In the village
Mrs Gertz was a stocky no nonsense
Kind of a woman
And when Pat returned
Over an hour and a half later
We asked him what happened
Well, he said
I told Mrs Gertz what had happened
She went into the house
And got shampoo, soap, scrub brushes
Tin buckets and a garbage bag
And put them on the picnic table
Then she stood waiting
With the garden hose
In one hand
And a razor strap
In the other hand
The two fellows came down the drive
And were about to sneak
Into the back yard
When she had her husband
Turn on the outdoor lights
She hollored
Get over here you two holligans
And get yourselves cleaned up
They got their hair shampooed
And started to peel off their clothes
When she said
Heinrich, I just bought those jeans
You're wearing 3 weeks ago
If you were going to be out
Doing what you were doing
Why didn't you put on old pants
With that
She gave him a belt with the razor strap
She told them they
Could have broke someone's neck
Tipping over outhouses
With people in them
And then what would people
Think of us
Why we'd have no customers left at all
At that point
She went a bit beserk
And started shouting at them
In English and German
And walloping them with the strap
They took to running around the yard
Stark naked
And her after them
Spraying them with the hose
And belting them with the strap
They made two passes
By the picnic table
And on the third pass
I said
I think I'll be going Mrs Gertz
She replied
You just do that, Mr Ryan
You just do that
I'd have you in for tea
But I'm a bit busy at the moment

Well to make a long story short
The two weekly town papers
Ran the story
Complete with pictures
And the Gertz brothers
Didn't turn out to be holligans
The older one
Went through for an engineer
And the younger one
Who went in over his head
Runs a plumbing business in town
And those that know
What happened Halloween night 1972
Sometimes like to remind him
How he got his start
In the plumbing business.