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Halloween an occasion to dress up as rain
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I haven’t been to a Halloween party in years and this year is no exception.

  

This year on Halloween, it is senior night at my daughter’s school and we get to walk out on the field as she is saluted as a senior member of the band.

  

I get to play my favorite role of being a daddy, for which I’ve had my good and bad moments. If this was a reality show, I don’t think I would have been voted off of Daddy Island. Not yet.

  

All sorts of information comes across my desk. Among it, what’s popular among the Halloween crowd this year. As is the case in most presidential election years, rubber masks that look like the candidates are very hot. Equally hot is the mask of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. If you don’t really look like her, you can put on a rubber mask and, voilà, you’re an Alaskan hockey mom.

  

I’ve not heard about the popularity of anything regarding Sen. Joe Biden, although he and I sport similar haircuts. Mine is all mine and his is all his, including some hair for which he has a receipt.

  

I spent a little time this week with 21st century philosopher and talented heavy equipment operator Earl Hedden. Earl, owner of Earl’s Grading, always has an interesting twist on things and I like to hear what he has to say. Fortunately for me, Earl doesn’t bill for talk time.

  

Earl doesn’t have an engineering degree, but he is as smart as they come about slopes and drainage.

  

We are building a new house and Earl is the go-to man on grading. I share the belief that one day it will rain again. We installed a complete set of gutters on the house. Earl used his bulldozer to sculpt the land in such a way that the water will go away from the house.

  

They had to bring in about a dozen loads of dirt and Earl and his mighty bulldozer scooped and pushed it into place. The greatest thing Earl has done is remove the last visible kudzu from the yard.

  

In the pre-Earl era, kudzu was out of control at our place. If kudzu was fire, my yard would have been the depths of hell. I tried some sort of spray that is supposed to kill kudzu. It killed some of it, but I still had a healthy crop.

  

I don’t know if plants have any sensory abilities, but if they do, kudzu would fear Earl and his big bad bulldozer. He scraped up what was left and put it in the Dumpster.

  

I’m not sure where they take the stuff in the Dumpster, but mine is in the kudzu-infested landfill.

  

We have planted grass seed where the kudzu once flourished. Now, if we get some of the rain that we so badly need, we will have a crop of grass and at the same time we can test out Earl’s water directing prowess.

  

I thought about this Halloween stuff and I thought that if I went to a Halloween party, I’d go as Earl, provided he’d let me drive his bulldozer.

  

Then, I had a better idea.

  

I’ll have my own Halloween party in the yard at the new house. You’re all invited to come dressed as rain.

  

Bring your own water, please.

  

Harris Blackwood is the author of “When Old Mowers Die.” His e-mail address is harrisb@forsythnews.com.