Mary's Son Is Strange And Wild...

Mary's Son is the Devil's Child.

So back in high school, we had a homeroom/reading kind of thing where you'd sit in silence and do stuff like homework or read a book (different than Study Hall).  I have no idea why this is so foggy in my head.  But I know it was always a different teacher, and it was always excruciating.  Like being forced to pull over on a long road trip, just because.  And having to do so for an hour.  Rather than getting the day over with quicker.  

So I bring in a book called IMP.  A rare move for me since I usually read from a very limited list of authors.  But there I was with Andrew Neiderman's (author of Tender Loving Care) book called IMP. Or, rather, iMP.  The teacher on this particular day was an Earth Science teacher who would (seriously) fill up a beaker with water and drink from it like a glass.  A beaker in a high school lab room.  And drink from it.  In my mind, he'd stir the water with a glass stirring rod, but I'm pretty sure that's some kind of embellishment related to memory loss.

This teacher would walk up and down the aisles seeing what each kid was reading.  He got to me and took the book out of my hand and read the yellow tag line on the back:

He threw a bit of a fit about this.  And, at the time, I had a feeling he thought the 'Mary' in the description, and I have no idea why I felt this way, related to Mary the Mother of God.  So he starts ranting that it's disrespectful sacrilegious crap and I start trying to explain that it's a different Mary.  And thinking about this now I'm CERTAIN he was just appalled at the notion of any woman giving birth to the Devil's Child (Catholic high school) and wasn't thinking it was THE Mary.  I would have made the worst defense attorney on the earth.

Funny that I still have the book (and that he gave it back to me and didn't toss it in the trash can at the front of the room).

Weird Reading

And there seems to be a [Michael Myers-like] face forming at the bottom of The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & Demonology.  Not a good sign.

Weekend Folk Reading: Harvest Home

Some distance away, I glimpsed the Widow Fortune sitting behind a booth, talking energetically with Sophie Hooke, and at the same time doing a sharp business in the honey trade. Other booths had pickles and preserves for sale, fresh garden produce and dairy things. Strolling among the tents and booths, I was interested in the workmanship embellishing the canvas sides: primitive, country-type designs, crudely but gracefully executed with the naivete of cave paintings. There were suns and moons and stars, various animals, a horse here, a cow there, a barn, a stick-figure man. And, everywhere, corn: sheaves of corn and shocks of corn and ears of corn, people growing, harvesting, cooking, eating, storing corn. Corn not only in its facsimile, but in reality, some of the tent entrances being framed by bound shocks and festooned with garlands of dried husks and leaves, and bunches of unshelled ears, their kernels yellow, red, brown, some variegated with all three.

- Thomas Tryon

A book recommendation by Wren, so I grabbed a used copy and got this beautiful old smelly thing with a neat (and strange) sticker on the inside.  Hoping it's cursed.  Love Tryon's writing style.  Very relaxed and believable.  I haven't gotten very far as yet, but am loving the slow-building mystery and tension.  That said, I'd still love to move into the town in the book.  I feel like country folk would get me.  Even if they ended up burning me in a pyre.

The weird sticker inside.

Blanton's Bourbon And Some Dark Tales

Some night reading and some Blanton's.   It's some fine stuff.  Hard to come by in these parts.  Always sells out fast, and you basically have to know someone.  Fortunately, I know someone.

The book is pretty great too.

Halloween Reading

I featured this book a few times on my old BREWING page before I moved to Blogger. I picked this up back when it was first released. If I were a Halloween preacher, this would be my Halloween bible. The pages and cover are soft and worn. It's packed with stories, lists, poems, and memories. Truly a Celebration of Halloween (as the cover states).


Currently out of print, but used copies are pretty reasonably priced.

Click here to buy.

The October Game

A Halloween classic by Ray Bradbury.

click the pic to read.