Tales of Halloween Mischief Part 3

This should actually be Tales of Halloween Mischief Part 4 because this is the last big Halloween run we made. I am going all Tarantino on you and putting the last run we made third because the year before this one was our best. Don't worry, that edition will be coming next week and I may even have some nice vintage newspaper clippings of it, but I digress

This run consisted of friends and family totaling 8 people. We used one vehicle, a giant red truck with 3 in the cab and 5 in the bed. Usually we just decide on the spur of the moment to go out and get our vandalism on, but this time we planned to go out a few days earlier. This was premeditated.

We made this a family affair and a few who had never been on one of our patented runs were getting their first taste. We loaded up and headed out close to 10 pm. You want to start late; you have fewer witnesses after 10 as well as less people that are still awake.

We start out by leaving the big city of Hartford and go toward Daviess County. There is a special something that a cousin had been lusting over for a few years, but just never tried to do anything about. There is a home outside of town that is not hugely decorated, but they do have two unique items in their yard. There are two iron stakes in the ground in this yard. I guess I would describe these iron stakes as shepherd’s hooks. The stakes came straight up out of the ground then curved downward at the top to make a hook and then curved back up to hold the items we were after. The items were two light up pumpkin men.

They were about two feet long. They were just like dolls. They were dressed as clowns and their heads were jack o lanterns that were lit up from the inside by a bulb. This was going to be a great caper because this house is on the corner of a somewhat small road, though there are quite a few residents that reside on this road and a major thoroughfare. The major thoroughfare, the one that passes right in front of the house, is a US highway. There is some traffic on this road. To top all this off, there is another road that accesses the US highway right beside the smaller road on the side of the house. Let’s not even get into the two roads that are in front of the house across the US highway. In other words this was not something that could be done fast and sloppy with no chance of being seen.

We decided to send out our two best men. They were dressed in dark clothes and have had many years of vandalism behind them. We pulled to the end of the road beside the home and they climbed out of the back of the truck. We drove off and were going to make a turn around and drive back by to see how things were going. If we drove by and saw the little pumpkin heads glowing in the night, we knew to drive by again. If they were out, we were to pull into the road just past the house to pick up our men.

We took a little time in turning around and gave our boys quite a few minutes to get the job done and sure enough by the time we got back, the pumpkin heads were gone and we pulled in to wait for our guys to return to the truck. They soon ran down the road and climbed in the bed of the truck and we were off. Not only had they successfully grabbed the pumpkin men, but they also got the iron stakes from which they hanged.

The run was not without some tense moments. When they jumped out of the truck, they climbed into a ditch just wide enough for the both of them and just deep enough for them to be just barely below eye level. The reason they had to to dive into this ditch was because as soon as they made their move to the yard, a car came down the road on the side of the house. They dived into the ditch and prayed. One of them said that the car was so close to them that they could have reached out and grabbed the exhaust pipe. The car drove on and they proceeded into the yard and procured the pumpkin heads without further incident.

With what we assumed was the biggest caper of the night out of the way, we decided the rest of the night would be random grabs and just have fun. We grabbed some pumpkins on the way back into town, including one crazy theft of a couple of giant plastic light up pumpkins. These things were about two feet tall and as big around as a basketball. Luckily we had one of the craziest (or stupidest) guys on our team that night and he went after the lit pumpkins.

Because they were lit up, you would assume that they had to be plugged into an outlet or an extension cord somewhere. You would have assumed right. In fact the pumpkins were plugged into an outlet inside the house. As I said, luckily we had our crazy guy with us and he calmly walked to the front door, bent down to inspect the pumpkins and check where they were plugged in. When he realized they were plugged in inside the house, he opened the door and reached in and unplugged both of them and made a dash for the truck. He did all this without causing any alarm as far as we could tell. We were off for more.

On the way back into town, our crazy guy tried to destroy a chiropractor’s business sign with a thrown pumpkin, but luckily when it comes to sports he is horrible. He missed it by a mile and I will say I was glad that happened. We had always done stupid things but never destroyed property, well at least until the end of the night (foreshadowing).

To be continued……….