Halloween Surprise

Author's Note: In honor of Halloween, I thought I would share a short story I wrote about a memorable Halloween from my youth. I can still hear my dad recounting the story at family gatherings. Enjoy.

My father was in the chicken business. To be more specific, our farm produced eggs. Our chickens were in wire cages with a slanted wire floor suspended from the ceilings of two long buildings. The hens would lay eggs every day in these cages and the eggs rolled out onto a wire tray. My cousin Marty and I had to pick them up and place them into paper flats or holders stacked one on top of the other. We pushed rickety, old, wooden carts down the aisles between the cages gathering these eggs. The flats on the carts were then unloaded into two-sided, cardboard egg cases. Each side held six flats. The egg cases were then stacked and stored inside the cooler, a refrigerated room at the front of each building. Several times a week, a truck picked up the cases of eggs and took them to market. This was the heart of my father’s business.

With all these chickens came plenty of chicken manure. Each chicken house had manure pits running underneath the cages that had to be cleaned out twice a year. This was not a pleasant job in those days, as it involved scoop shovels, wheelbarrows and manual labor in a hot and smelly environment. My dad and my uncle hired local high school boys to accomplish this task. These boys quickly learned there were easier ways to earn a buck, so it became harder and harder to recruit them. Several years later, someone invented a machine to do it quicker and more efficiently. Eventually, we bought one of those machines, but at the time, this backbreaking, stench-filled process was essential. The manure was taken from the pits and loaded onto a manure spreader. A tractor pulled the spreader out into the area fields and the manure was then distributed as fertilizer. Nothing went to waste on our farm. Even the chickens were recycled to the soup factory after they stopped laying eggs.

One fall, some of the high school boys got together and decided they would have some fun with all the eggs we had stored in our coolers. They made plans to strike on Halloween night under cover of darkness. There was a deserted lane just up the road from our chicken farm where they would park the “get-away car” for their escape back to town. One of them would stay in the car with the engine running. Fortunately, for my dad and my uncle, one of the boys tipped them off to the plan, so they were able to plan a little Halloween surprise of their own.

I was only ten years old at the time, but I will never forget my father and uncle’s account of what took place that Halloween night. Sometime after dark, my dad and uncle made their way out to the chicken house to set up a trap by the cooler. They took our farm dog, Shotsy, and a loaded shotgun. Dad meant only to scare, not hurt, the young egg-bandits who would be sneaking into the chicken house that night. They settled in, listened in the dark for footsteps and the telltale laughter, and hushed voices that would follow.

Finally, just after 10’clock, the boys came sneaking up to the building closest to the road. My dad and uncle figured this would be the more likely target of the two buildings. As the door opened slowly, my uncle reached around for the light switch. Suddenly my dad, shotgun in hand, and our dog were bathed in light before them.

“What are you guys doing here?” Dad shouted, trying hard not to laugh at the surprised look on the boys’ faces.

Once the initial shock of being discovered by my dad holding a gun and a growling dog sunk in, there was a mad scramble for the door. No time for words. Escape was their only thought. Quickly my dad and uncle followed them out of the door. Shotsy was barking and growling but dad held her back until the boys had a good head start running out ahead of them. Suddenly a shotgun blast rang out and the boys changed the direction they were running. Now they were headed toward a dark patch of ground by the ditch beside the road. What they did not know is that my dad and uncle had dumped a large load of chicken manure in the ditch at that spot.

As the boys ran knee-deep into the pile of chicken manure, they began to slip and fall down, thoroughly coating themselves. Shotsy was not far behind them, now. She was barking ferociously to make sure they kept running down the road to their waiting car. The driver having heard the shotgun blast and seeing the boys running toward him with a dog on their tail jumped into the car and got ready to move out. Unfortunately, for the boys, the driver could also smell the chicken manure on the mob running toward his car. Discretion being the better part of valor, he quickly rolled up his windows, locked the doors and sped off toward town, leaving the young would-be egg breakers stranded. They now had to walk the two miles back to town in the dark covered head to foot in chicken manure. I still cringe when I think what that hike back to town must have been like for them.

My father had quite a reputation in town after that Halloween. We never had to worry about vandalism after that. He had a newfound respect, especially among the high school boys. A few years after that, we moved away to the suburbs of Chicago. Marty’s sister, Brenda, and her family moved into our old farmhouse. My father and Shotsy are gone now. There is not much left of the farm but a vacant building surrounded by weeds amid the sprawling corn and soybean fields, but I think about those days and I miss them. I miss hearing my dad telling the story of his Halloween surprise.