This year’s garlic was an exceptional crop.
This is the second year I’ve grown garlic – thanks to the Mueller family who shared heritage cloves for planting. The garlic, when first dug, is purplish and its fragrance immediately reminds of favorite meals, good wines, first dates (that was a mistake – eating garlic, not the date!), and, of course, vampires.
Vampires were a muted terror when I was young. My exposure to the blood sucking undead ranged from 1922’s Nosferatu (directed by F.W.Murnau) to Sir Graves Ghastly, Lawson J. Deming’s campy caricature of the famous Transylvanian. Mr. Deming hosted a Saturday afternoon movie program featuring cinema classics such as Godzilla, Rodan, and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. To a little boy in the 60s, the idea that someone could turn into a bat seemed awesome.
It wasn’t until 1984 that I became genuinely terrified of vampires –well, at least for an evening.
I was working swing shifts in the Romulus, Michigan terminal of a regional trucking firm based in Monroe, Michigan. Any given week, I could be midnight foreman on the loading dock, assisting dispatch on afternoons, or making dunning calls on the day shift. From time to time, I’d be lent to other terminals to cover vacations as a garage foreman, traffic clerk, or some other role.
One particular week, the shift was from 10 pm to 6 am – Sunday evening through Friday morning. Usually, I’d make the 35 mile drive back to Ann Arbor and fall fast asleep in my small (though beautifully appointed with yellow shag carpeting!) one-bedroom apartment on the south side of Ann Arbor. This Friday was no exception – I slept soundly from 7 am until about 3 pm. A friend had left a copy of 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King at my apartment and I decided to make a pot of coffee and begin reading.
A second pot - then a couple of cheap beers - propelled my reading through the afternoon. Somewhere around 6 pm, I remember reading this line: “The town knew about darkness.” (ch. 10, p. 208).
What followed was one of those occasions where an author sucks you in. Mr. King’s depiction of the dirty underbelly of a small town is disconcerting, iconic, and masterful. Reading this chapter offered a momentum that forced me to read to the end – all 427 pages. The story, for those who do not know, references vampires vis-à-vis human frailty Naturally, the vampires depict evil – but it is hard to cheer for the humans whose actions seem to nurture that same evil.
I finished reading around 3:30 in the morning and had as major a case of the heebie-jeebies as ever known in modern history. I turned on every light in the apartment, put a chair against the door – I was even lashing chop sticks together as crosses to defend myself from Kurt Barlow (read the book!).
Fear eventually melted to logic and I finally found sleep around 6 am.
Every so often, I start at chapter 10 and reread the account of Jerusalem Lot’s (the book’s fictional town) fetid underbelly.
Vampires were a muted terror when I was young. My exposure to the blood sucking undead ranged from 1922’s Nosferatu (directed by F.W.Murnau) to Sir Graves Ghastly, Lawson J. Deming’s campy caricature of the famous Transylvanian. Mr. Deming hosted a Saturday afternoon movie program featuring cinema classics such as Godzilla, Rodan, and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. To a little boy in the 60s, the idea that someone could turn into a bat seemed awesome.
It wasn’t until 1984 that I became genuinely terrified of vampires –well, at least for an evening.
I was working swing shifts in the Romulus, Michigan terminal of a regional trucking firm based in Monroe, Michigan. Any given week, I could be midnight foreman on the loading dock, assisting dispatch on afternoons, or making dunning calls on the day shift. From time to time, I’d be lent to other terminals to cover vacations as a garage foreman, traffic clerk, or some other role.
One particular week, the shift was from 10 pm to 6 am – Sunday evening through Friday morning. Usually, I’d make the 35 mile drive back to Ann Arbor and fall fast asleep in my small (though beautifully appointed with yellow shag carpeting!) one-bedroom apartment on the south side of Ann Arbor. This Friday was no exception – I slept soundly from 7 am until about 3 pm. A friend had left a copy of 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King at my apartment and I decided to make a pot of coffee and begin reading.
A second pot - then a couple of cheap beers - propelled my reading through the afternoon. Somewhere around 6 pm, I remember reading this line: “The town knew about darkness.” (ch. 10, p. 208).
What followed was one of those occasions where an author sucks you in. Mr. King’s depiction of the dirty underbelly of a small town is disconcerting, iconic, and masterful. Reading this chapter offered a momentum that forced me to read to the end – all 427 pages. The story, for those who do not know, references vampires vis-à-vis human frailty Naturally, the vampires depict evil – but it is hard to cheer for the humans whose actions seem to nurture that same evil.
I finished reading around 3:30 in the morning and had as major a case of the heebie-jeebies as ever known in modern history. I turned on every light in the apartment, put a chair against the door – I was even lashing chop sticks together as crosses to defend myself from Kurt Barlow (read the book!).
Fear eventually melted to logic and I finally found sleep around 6 am.
Every so often, I start at chapter 10 and reread the account of Jerusalem Lot’s (the book’s fictional town) fetid underbelly.
And that is why garlic’s reek is perfume-like and comforting.
I also had a Stephen King book scare me. It was Thanksgiving weekend and since Memphis was already my home, I stayed in the dorm basically by myself that weekend. I picked up Pet Cemetary and began to read. Every sound in the dorm added to my fright, so after several chapters I decided to put it away. That didn't last long. The book was back in my hand just like the animals who kept returning from the dead. A book has never struck that kind of fear in me before or since!
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