October Surprise!!!

This is at the house on Marigold Street.  I'm fifteen or sixteen and it is October, but not quite Halloween yet, but it is dark early and I am sitting in the living room in my dad's recliner watching a spooky movie on the TV.  My sisters Anne and Carla are on the couch to my left transfixed by the evil doings in a dungeon. Vincent Price is in the movie and I'm pretty sure it is "The Pit and the Pendulum" adapted from a story by Poe.  

I can't remember much of the movie, but I read the short story, once, and knew there was a big pit and a clockwork pendulum with a sharp crescent blade that creeps closer, with each pass, to the victim tied to an altar, threatening to eventually cut him in two bloody pieces.  

My mom is out shopping and nobody else is home except for my dad, and he announces from the kitchen doorway that he is headed down to Fred Meyers for some brass screws for the screen door hinge.  I nod and go back to watching and hear the door to the garage open and close. 

A Penny For Your Thoughts

My dad called me into his bedroom one Saturday morning and handed me a butter knife and told me to dig a penny out of a lamp socket.  I was twelve at the time and the socket was on the north wall of his room and four feet off the floor and looked like a candle stick.

I walked over to it and peered into the opening in the top where the special flame-shaped bulb used to be.  There did appear to be a scorched copper Lincoln-head cent down there.  

Naked Cyclist Snapped in Poland

A Polish man raced his bicycle past a speed camera wearing nothing but sneakers on his feet and underwear...on his head, as a protest.  They clocked him going 33 MPH in a 25 MPH zone.  There are no registration plates on bikes, so the photo cops had their work cut out for them. 

Mariusz Sztuba claims he wasn't completely naked; that he was wearing a thong, but they still piled on a lewd conduct charge on top of the speeding.   The total was 1000 zloty or $315.   Sztuba says the presence of the ticketing camera speed trap is giving his village a bad reputation.

--And people riding around starkers doesn't? 

He did his minimalist pedaling in October in Bialy Bor and Judge Przykucki found him guilty.

I would have increased the fine, were I the judge, for his wearing a thong, and I think it only fair that a cyclist disclose, before selling his bike, if it has ever had a naked rider, and I'm thinking it is cold in northern Poland in October.

Read the whole article here:  Polish Popsicle