Posted Dec 8, 08 02:00 AM
“Willy’s”
There’s something about growing up in a small town. Call it the ideal balance between insulated innocence and a dusk that falls suspiciously early.
The way-worn, way-out-of-touch adage is that everyone supposedly knows each other. That’s a whole lot of crock. You trying keeping 17,000 faces straight. Ain’t happening.
Mandan, North Dakota -- on the wall map, that’s where my affectionate hometown stick pin gets pushed. And with 17,000 faces, obviously, there’s much more than the stereotypical post office-grocery store-bar trifecta. (Well, uhh, certainly there’s no shortage of bars.)
But any small town officially qualifies for Small Town America when it – like Mandan – has a neighborhood “spook house”.
We’re all familiar with the spook house -- that too-silent residence, usually on a sun-deficient avenue. It’s that style of home that the architects only made one of – ever. The front yard oak trees seem to yield autumn leaves all of the time, and school kids convey it’s legend in thick whispers. Whether or not the legend contains a shred of truth is missing the point.
Mandan’s spook house bore the nickname “Willy’s”. Willy’s was two blocks over and one block up from a main artery (artery – nice), difficult to locate in daylight but remarkably easy at night. It’s story unfolded to the extent that the owner’s daughter had hung herself in the attic. And that’s where, every night between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., the figure could be seen… in a shroud. Pacing. With candles in all corners.
Back in high school, with no part-time job, it became the fashion to end a weekend night’s video gathering or card-playing with a stop by Willy’s. Across the street, of course. With the engine turned off and our excitable breath steaming up the inside windows.
I don’t think the terms “privacy” or “voyeurism” ever entered the discussion. But whether or not the owner of the house was actually a substitute teacher – a robust powder-white man in a checkered blazer, lovingly nicknamed “Tex” – was.
“Hey,” someone allegedly uttered in Geometry class, Tex scoping the angles on the blackboard. “isn’t that that Satan worshipper?”
Tex whipped around, evil eye trained.
Well, at least that’s what I heard. Probably from the same school kids whispering back in paragraph five.
Once, on after dark viewing of the spook house, my classmate Roy was so impressed (my build-up to the moment paid off with his torrent of “no way!”s) that we swung by his place and returned with his dad. Roy’s father yucked it up, and even shared some high-powered Bausch and Lomb binoculars. The creepy details really jumped out this time -- the veiled, swaying curtains; the massive parliamentary, Harry Potter-style book filled with either otherworldly incantations or unabridged dictionary definitions.
Late one Saturday, Alvin and I had played cards. He lost thirty-something and change to me, money neither of us had or would ever see. But at about 1:15 in the morning, as we sat parked across from Willy’s, a thought entered my mind.
“Alvin,” I intoned. “If you get out of the car, walk across the street, walk up to his front porch – you don’t have to knock on the door – and walk back, I will knock three dollars off what you owe me.”
Seeing an opportunity – as only teenagers could in a ridiculous moment – he quickly jumped, “Okay!”
Alvin got out of the car and speed-walked up the lawn. His head went side to side, waiting for some hidden sniper to open fire. When he reached the front door he distinctly heard a
HONK! HONK! HONK!
Alvin froze, cringed, and retreated forty yards in – if memory serves me correct – exactly two steps. He pulled up on the handle of the driver’s side door.
Oops. Locked.
Alvin pounded on the window and I gave in. He was safely inside, keys in the ignition, the Honda Civic three blocks away in five seconds. Insert profanity here.
“… Alvin,” I interrupted. “You didn’t walk.”
I tell ya, I tell ya.
People who grew up in the suburbs missed out. Take away Tobe Hooper’s POLTERGEIST (1982), and the only thing spooky about tract housing is the long commute.
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 02:00 AM