Autumn Feasts October 15. - November 11, 2002 about holidays, fairy beings, storms, and mercury mines

Our ancestors had to be pretty hyper around fall. That's the only explanation I can come up with when trying to explain the barrage of celebrations and holidays attached to autumn. We have it more colorful because of living in a melting pot of multiple cultures. Like shots from a machine gun, Halloween, All Souls Night, Thanksgiving, St. Nicolas, Christmas and New Year's Eve zip over our heads.

Halloween is one of those typically American holidays. For last two years, it was not really on our radar; we had lived in a completely anonymous rental house, where tenants came and went like statues in a horologe and where I stopped greeting my neighbors after a month of trying (my good will uselessly bounced off eternally empty and leaden Asian faces). It just was not an environment for neighborhood parties. With our new house, our situation changed radically and so we began to investigate, what it takes to have a Halloween.

I admit without a need to be pressured that we failed right in the first phase, that is, in decorating our home. Which, in fact, turned out the be a fatal flaw, as illuminated carved pumpkins and spooky figurines represent a signal to trick-or-treaters. Returning home was another problem altogether. Even in families with a workaholic father, TWO adults are required, full time (one trots down the streets with children dressed in costumes, while the other one stays at home and deals with incoming waves of trick-or-treaters) -- hence everybody quits working early and drives home before dark. You may have noticed me cursing our local traffic several times already, but this was really stressing my nerves. Despite using smart shortcuts to avoid freeways temporarily transformed into parking lots, I still reached home a whole hour later than usual. My tooth, drugged insensitive earlier that day by a merciful dentist, had awaken and did not improve my situation at all.

	At Quicksilver Park, we found a decent alternative to now distant Borel Hill

Moaning in a low voice, having crawled into the darkest back corner of our house, I hoped that merry trick-or-treaters would not come. Still, one water sprite appeared, accompanied by a very blue rabbit. She had to be a completely fairy being, running as she was around our neighborhood in fluffy, paper thin dress, while I rattled my teeth (ouch), wrapped in a fleece. Sid came much later and so he never saw any actual trick-or-treaters, although he had turned on the lights and put out a bowl with lollipops in the shape of skulls. I swear we'll be much more responsible next year.

And where did Halloween come from? It's hard to say. It seems to be a chaotic mix of various legends, customs and celebrations, all more or less related to Autumn. Roots allegedly reach back to Celtic holiday of Samhain, an occasion to slaughter cattle for the winter. The name Halloween is a misspelled All Hallows Even, which is a Christian term for the evening before All Saints' Day, which precedes All Souls' Day. It is believed that Scottish Protestants were first to celebrate Halloween, although in their version it was a gathering of relatives and their associates, with various customs and games of future telling, mostly weddings. E.g. skinning of an apple in front of a mirror, which was supposed to reveal the face of a future husband to a girl.

	View to Morgan Hill

Scotland was most likely the source of carved turnips, later replaced by pumpkins, which are easier to cut. Original lights are connected with a mischief named Jack, who after his death could get neither to heaven nor hell and was condemned to wander the Earth until the Judgment Day, carrying a light that lured lost pilgrims into heathlands. These lights were not originally connected with Halloween. Caroling (going from house to house with a song or a ding-dong) used to be part of Christmas traditions, while costumes belonged to Thanksgiving, just as various practical jokes and some innocent extortions. As Christmas and Thanksgiving turned into more family-centric holidays, jokes and mischief moved to Halloween. It became a day of freedom and tension release, before the season of serious and formal Christmas descended on people. Today, caroler (or better, trick-or-treaters, as they no longer sing carols) ask at the door of the house they visit, if the visited ones wish to "trick or treat". Theoretically, if you refuse to treat them (= give candy or other small token), they trick you with some little joke (toothpaste on window panes?). I have not heard of anyone who would try that, though, costumed kids are usually quite charming, and so you gladly let go of some sweets. United Spoilsports News Agency, which since 1930 has been trying to prove that any fun activity is inherently lethal, has collected records of many Halloween problems -- from damaged property to razor blades in apples and candle poisoning, but real police accounts hold only one deadly case, where an attempt to collect life insurance coverage was the main thread.

With Halloween, we officially started the Fall. Weather was already cold since half of October (last use of our pool occurred on 14th), but we were to wait for our first season's rain, while the usual suspects among eco-terrorists announced doom and gloom in form of a drought. Hence we felt quite well when one day the clouds moved in and air began to smell this late autumn nostalgic wetness. It look magnificent from my giant window at work, especially when lightning started to flash. There was no thread dry on me when I ran from the building to my parked car -- I had to wade through several creeks suddenly streaming down the walkways and roads, then of course wind did not intend to get limited by my umbrella and showered me with horizontal rain. It had dawned to me that this was not a regular rain.

	Silicon Valley from Quicksilver you can picture the gigantic proportion of urban coverage of the San Francisco Bay (the bay itself starts farther down beyond a curtain of haze on the horizon)

One gets used to the sad fact that every year, Californians' driving speed drops to ox wagon pace with the first rain of the season. This time, though, I actually appreciated it. Pavement was visible in short, picosecond glimpses just after every sweep of windshield wipers, and so I drove most of my commute route by tail lights of a car in front of me. Thanks to the storm, everybody had their lights on (which is otherwise unthinkable during daylight!), which eased the traffic tension a bit. Then I only had to avoid fallen branches and leaves (yes, palm leaves as well). Piece of cake.

Back at the house, I ran to check out damages. Most disturbing was a wide pool of water along our side face wall, a small fallen segment of roofing shingle, and deep pool of water in both swimming pool and jacuzzi covers. Those are allegedly designed to carry up to six adults, but I'm not quite sure if that is more or less than one and half foot of water. Then electricity went out. I bounced around the house looking like a miner in a collapsed tunnel (wearing a flashlight on my forehead) and managed to find my huge bag of candles, which I bought the other day in bulk sale. I found that our wonderful cordless phones by Panasonic are rendered useless by lack of electricity, and was glad we have a classical, old, dingy one that works. Our heating system was down as well -- furnace burns gas, but an electric fan blows hot air into ducts. Finally the worst -- our cooking range is electrical, and cooking out on a gas barbecue in our back yard did not seem a good idea, while the storm lasted... Well, don't be afraid, my Hippo did not have to starve, for we went to a restaurant that was still online. First I tried to call our energy supplier and tell them about our outage. Unfortunately everything had been automated, and a machine always told me that according to our phone number and their records, we really weren't their customers and so we might go bother someone else (interesting, is it not, for at billing time they readily remember us being their customers). Eventually I asked our neighbors who have been living here for thirty years (and who could have been noticed by PG&E by now) to call them on our behalf. It must have worked out for the lights were back after we returned from a sushi place.

We seemed to have better luck than Krens, who were left without power for almost twenty four hours. In the morning we began pumping water out of the pool cover, alas, too late for our jacuzzi -- water pushed the cover in and collected yellow pollen and brown leaves transformed our blue bathtub into striking green. Our large pool survived, and by afternoon, when it stopped raining, our home emerged from surrounding waters like Noah's Arch.

Weekend looked again like if there were no autumn at all and so we hiked by Quicksilver mines. As you may have guessed, they used to extract mercury there and it is not advisable to drink water or eat fish from local creeks. A view to our Valley surprised me -- from the Peninsula (that is, Borel Hill) we always see only a narrow band of civilization between the hills and the Bay; from the Quicksilver hills, that is, from the southern end of the Valley, one can see a whole endless sea of houses and trees -- it is easy to imagine that it represents urban development for some five or six million people.

Copyright © 2002-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.