Halloween Potatoes

A story and some reflections

Photo by Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash

Another Halloween is in the books. As is tradition in my neighborhood, the streets were packed with kids and their parents. I don't think I saw a single person who wasn't dressed up. We had Marvel superheroes, inflatable dinosaurs and unicorns, werewolves, ghosts, and mobs from Minecraft walking the streets. Halloween is almost like a religious holiday where I live. Lots of kids and their parents go out and about, in-costume and going from one decorated house to another, trick or treating, laughing, and screaming. There are lots of grownups who are children at heart too. Like our neighbor who projects Scooby Doo cartoons on his garage door and drops full-size candy bars from his second-story window down a long tube and into the hands of eager children. Or like our neighbor with the Little Free Library in her yard; she sits between Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers at a fire pit filled with a bundle of orange lights, pretending to roast marshmallows while handing out potatoes from her garden.

And then there’s me - well, sometimes. At least on Halloween night. The rest of the year, not so much.

I can't speak for Potato Lady or Scooby Doo Guy, but for me, the kids bring it out in me. Everyone has an inner child. Most days, mine sits in a room with bunkbeds made up with dinosaur sheets and surrounded by too many comics, which keep him busy while I deal with mounting responsibilities of being an adult. Sometimes, he gets out, and Halloween is one of those times. I can't force him to watch all these kids get buckets full of candy without letting him partake.

I've been seeing a lot of my peers this year say that they aren't feeling it this October. Now I'm not saying having children is the only way to solve this nostalgic ennui (and I'm certainly not telling people to have kids just so they can enjoy Halloween), but it certainly helped me this year.

And it helped the next day as I prepared to take down our decorations. Beforehand, my oldest and I went to Big Lots to buy more decorations at 75% off. I do love some retail therapy, and I've (for now) sworn off buying books I won't get around to reading. After that, everything went in boxes and/or got stacked up in the garage. This included Ah-ooh, the seven-foot animatronic werewolf my daughter still says is her best friend. On Halloween night, I’d moved him from our living room to the driveway. He was a big hit this year, scaring and delighting trick or treaters brave enough to grab candy from the table beside him as he howled, growled, flailed his clawed hands, and twisted his torso back and forth. All the while, he glared at his visitors with eyes that lit up green and white. I’ll miss having him posted up in our living room, and it will be nice to have him out again next year.

With Halloween in the rearview, I'm back at reading Ronald Kelly's Fear. I'm also reading Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. The latter has made quite a splash in the past couple years and deservedly so. It’s a dark fantasy set in the early 20th century, in the wake of a re-release of the landmark (but incredibly racist) film The Birth of a Nation. In what plays out like an alternate history, the story sees its protagonist hunting demons that wear a certain white hood. Check it out if you like your pulp imbued with biting social commentary.

The former is a classic for a reason. I’ve been reading Fear on and off since the Spring, taking my time with it because I quite frankly don’t want it to end. It’s every bit the coming-of-age horror novel that Stephen King’s It or Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night is, but its unique setting of Tennessee during the Great Depression and the author’s distinctly Southern-fried voice put the book in a category of its own.

I haven't been watching much other than wrestling lately, and even that, I've been watching in limited sittings. Consuming copious amounts of content has been less and less appealing to me over the last year¹. Time with loved ones and time spent creating just feels more important. As Blink 182 says, “I guess this is growing up.”

Anyway, here's a short story I wrote Saturday morning. It's called "Halloween Potatoes," and I think it could make a nice picture book. See if you agree.

Until next time... 

This past Halloween, one of my neighbors gave me a potato.

But it wasn’t just any potato, it was a Halloween Potato.

What’s the difference? I’m glad you asked. I didn’t know the difference either—not until my potato began to change.

My mom wanted to roll it in salt and olive oil, then bake it in the oven, but I said “no.” This potato was special, and I wanted to keep it.

After a while, my Halloween Potato sprouted eyes, but they weren’t like any ordinary potato eyes. They were actual eyes, human eyes.

And lots of them.

I didn’t tell my mom because this was just too weird, and if I’ve learned anything during my time on earth, it’s that grownups can’t handle weird.

So, I told my friend Scarlet. She said she got a Halloween Potato too!

We decided our potatoes had to meet.

By then, our potatoes had grown mouths as well, and upon meeting, they spoke in their surprisingly musical potato language.

Scarlet and I decided our potatoes should stay together, so we arranged a schedule for whose house they should stay at and when.

But one night, my mom found the potatoes.

“Oh, no,” she said. “If your father found out you’ve been keeping Halloween Potatoes, he’d be very unnerved.”

“But I like my potatoes,” I said, not having a clue what she meant by unnerved.

“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “As long as they stay in your room, you can keep them. But giving them food and water is your responsibility.”

I told Scarlet what happened and what I learned. We had no idea we needed to feed our potatoes! It wasn’t like they’d come with instructions for care.

We tried feeding them everything from traditional plant food to fruit to other types of starchy vegetables, but nothing worked. Our potatoes spat back whatever we tried to feed them, and in some cases, they outright refused to take a single bite.

We looked on the internet for how to care for Halloween potatoes, but we mostly just found recipes for Pumpkin Spice Potatoes. We even found a post on a forum by someone saying Halloween Potatoes were dangerous.

Funny. Our potatoes didn’t seem dangerous to us. Whoever wrote that must have tried to cook his.

I left the potatoes with Scarlet and headed home, a little sad and not sure what to do.

I asked my mom if she knew what Halloween Potatoes ate.

My dad overheard and came into the room. I braced for him to become unnerved like my mom warned he would be.

But to our surprise, he said, “I had a Halloween Potato when I was your age. You have to feed them bugs.”

Now that he mentioned it, I hadn’t seen any beetles or spiders in the house lately.

I rushed over to Scarlet’s to share the good news.

We decided to occasionally let the potatoes out in our backyards so they could forage for bugs out there—and get some exercise, of course.

Winter came, then spring and summer, and the potatoes grew larger and larger.

They even sprouted green tentacles, and at the end of each was a baby Halloween Potato.

By October, the baby potatoes detached, and ours began to glow a radiant green. That Halloween, Scarlet and I handed out the baby potatoes, along with instructions for care.

It wasn’t long before there was nothing weird about Halloween Potatoes at all. They gave our neighborhood new life, kept the pest population down, and filled our homes with their musical potato language.

1. Reading is an exception. Books feel different than other forms of entertainment. They always have, but perhaps I'm biased.