How do you like your eggs?

It was 1972, I lived in Nansemond County, recently annexed by Suffolk VA and I was bored. Living in the country there wasn’t a whole lot to do other than build tree houses, forts and ride our bikes. Halloween was just around the corner and I had trick or treat, ghost stories and pranks on my mind. I was too old to trick or treat so I had to think of something else to do for the season. Billy was my comrade in “crime”, not the illegal kind of crime, the bored country kids kind of crime.  What could I do this Halloween season that would scare someone, but not harm them, at least not physically.

With Halloween around the corner, what night could I pull off such a prank? I thought to myself, tonight is Saturday night and my parents typically go out on their date night every Saturday. To be quite honest, this is the night when most of my escapades were launched. The two cats were away and I was the mouse that wanted to play.  As I sat around that Saturday morning with my buddy Billy, I asked him “What can we do tonight that will scare someone?” We were sitting on the couch in my den and as he looked into space, his eyes fell upon these two ancient looking candle holders with rope handles. They looked like something from medieval times.
wooden gothic medieval lanternsBilly asked me, “What are those hanging on the wall? They look kind of creepy.” “Oh, those are portable candle sconces. You stick a big ole’ candle on the nail and you can carry them around.” I replied.  Billy got this mischevious look in his eyes. They are pretty creepy and there are two, one for you and one for me.” I looked back at Billy and the wheels of a prank started to spin. “You know, if we put a large sheet over our heads, lit the candles and walked around, it would look pretty scary, but who could we scare?” Billy continued while grinning, “Your little brother, do you think that we could scare him?” “Probably, but we would need to do more than just wear a sheet and carry these creepy candle lanterns around.” I answered. “How about if we had scary music and turned the lights out in the house.” I added. “That could be scary but how would you pull it off?” Billy asked. My mind started to ponder of all the different ways I could turn this night into a spooky experience.

After Billy headed home, I started to think about what tools and other resources were at hand. I would want spooky music, no lights in the house, two sheets for ghosts and the candle sconces that hung on the family room wall. I had just started to experiment with home electricity and knew enough to know that our fuse panel had a bunch of glass screw in fuses that controlled different parts of the house. If lights were on in the house and you simply unscrewed a fuse, then the lights in that section of the house would go out. Seemed simple enough. Now, how to create creepy music. Back in the 70’s, you didn’t download creepy music from your computer because the personal PC hadn’t really been introduced in every home. I did possess an album from ‘Iron Butterfly’.  There was a popular song called ‘Inagodadavida’ which if played at speed 16, would sound very scary.
Iron Butterfly albumMy parents stereo system was in the living room and it had a turntable with speed 16. I would keep that circuit turned off until the opportune time and then turn that fuse on, turning on the turntable and stereo to play the song at the preselected speed 16. I drew out a map of the different circuits of the house after testing what each glass fuse controlled. I would slowly turn off the circuits in the house one by one, starting with the lights in the furthest part of the house and one by one, the house would begin to get darker.

The next hurdle was going to be, how to keep my brother in the house when all of this spookiness started to happen. I had an idea. I could take the front doorknob and turn it around so that the keyed part was inside the house and the inside portion was outside, once the door was closed, he would be locked in.

My brother and I were not known for spending a lot of time together back then, so how was I going to get him out of the house so that Billy and another friend of mine could get dressed up in the sheets, light the candles and then start down the stairs from the 2nd floor acting as ghosts? My brother Drew had wanted to go on my adventures, but rarely did I let him. I would tell him that we were going to take a dozen eggs and go egg a few houses after our parents left for their date night. “Hey Drew, how about coming with me tonight to egg some houses?” Mom had just come back from the market and had a fresh dozen of eggs. “Sure, that would be great!” he replied. “Ok, when it gets dark we will head on out and cook up some fun.” I said with a grin on my face.
date night wooden sign

It seemed like forever for my parents to leave that night. Billy and his buddy Jimmy were down the street waiting for Drew and me to leave the house. Finally, my parents headed out the door. “We are off, behave yourselves and we will be home later.” they said as they left for the evening. The great Halloween caper had begun. “Ok, let’s get our ammo and head on out.” I told Drew. “Why do you want me to go with you? You never take me with you on these escapades?” Drew asked suspiciously. “I don’t know, I just thought it would be fun.” I replied, only not telling him which part of the evening’s events were going to be fun in my mind. Now that it was dark, we headed out. We walked around with 3 eggs in each coat pocket, 6 for Drew and 6 for me. We finally found some homes that looked like the owners were out for the evening. “Watch what I do.” I told Drew. I took an egg and hurled it across the yard. Splat, it hit the target, the front door and the yolk dripped down to the threshold as planned. “See, it’s that easy.” I told my brother. He chose a brick ranch a few doors down, unoccupied for the evening. He wound up like a pitcher on his mound and decided to hit the side of a large brick house. It found it’s target and made a cracking noise as the egg yolk found it’s way deep into the brick and mortar. “That’s not going to be easy to clean.” he said, very proud of
egg on front door
his first egging. “You’re right, we will have to see what it looks like in the daytime.” I grinned. After a few more houses and only 2 eggs left, I told him that we should probably save a couple of eggs for breakfast the next morning or we would have to explain what had become of a brand new dozen eggs.

It was time for the Halloween prank to begin. “Boy, that was fun!” my brother exclaimed. “Yeah, that was pretty fun.” I said as we got closer to our house. I noticed that all of the lights in the house were on. I had already put the record on the turntable, set it to speed 16 and had the stereo turned on. I had turned that circuit off so that when I turned it on, the music would begin. Right after my parents left, I had turned the doorknob around backwards so that it would do what I had intended it to do. I just hoped that Billy and Jimmy were in place. Finally, we reached the front door. I had left the door slightly open so that it would not lock. I opened the front door and pushed my brother into the house. I slammed the door so that it would lock. My brother looked at me wondering what was going on. I ran to the back of the house and opened the fuse panel. Based on my paper layout, I started to unscrew the glass fuses, from the furthest part of the house to the closest one where he was located. It slowly started to get dark, one room at a time. I turned on the fuse that controlled the turntable. ‘Inagodadavida’ started to play on speed 16, very slowly and boy did it sound creepy. Finally the last light in the house was turned off. Billy and Jimmy came walking downstairs in their white sheets. The candles were eerily glowing in the rope handled sconces that they carried beside them. They tried their best to sound like ghosts as they moaned while the flames of the candle reflected off of the stairwell walls as they descended. I was the one controlling the fuse panel, so I wasn’t able to see Drew’s reaction. Billy told me that Drew appeared very startled, but not really

ghost in bed sheet

scared. He took a piece of driftwood that was on the coffee table and started swinging it at Billy, not knowing who was under that sheet. Quickly Billy realized that Drew wasn’t going to start whimpering like a baby, but ready to fight his way out of this bad dream. In the tussle, the candle wax dripped from the sconce onto my parent’s new carpet. I ran around the front of the house and saw the commotion so I went back to the garage and turned all of the circuits back on to end the dream sequence.

When I entered the front door, Drew said, “You didn’t scare me a bit. I knew something was up when you wanted me to go egg houses with you. Also, when you pushed me into the house, I knew something was up. What kind of music was that? It was kinda’ scary and where did you get those candle holders?” “That was Iron Butterfly’s ‘Inagodadavida’. Wasn’t it creepy? I put it on speed 16.” I said very proudly. “Those candle sconces were the ones hanging next to the fireplace in the den.” I added. Suddenly I noticed something shiny on the stair carpet. It was wax from one of the candles that had spilled. “Aww man, I’m going to get murdered. Look at the wax on mom and dad’s new carpet!” I said as the reality of it all started to lower the satisfaction of our caper. Drew just stood there and howled, laughing. “You are going to be in deep water and you deserve it! Pretending to take me on an outing and then trying to scare me like that.” I knew that he was right. I did deserve it.
removing candle wax from carpet
I told Billy and Jimmy thanks for taking part, told them goodbye and found a knife and a brush trying to get every bit of wax out of that carpet. Drew went off to watch TV or play his guitar. I don’t remember which.  I spent the rest of the evening taking the sheets, throwing them in the wash, hanging the sconces back up, along with the new burn marks that candles had made on them. Do you know how hard it is to get wax out of carpet? When you don’t have Google around to ask what is the best method, you just pick at it until it looks ok. That took me forever.

The evening finally passed, we headed to bed, my parents got home and I made some sort of deal with Drew to not tell my folks what had happened. He had thrown a number of eggs at neighbors homes and he was not free of guilt. I’m sure I used that in my defense. I’m sure my parents saw the remaining wax on the steps, but I probably pleaded ignorance. Too many years have passed since I pulled off that prank, but to this day I still feel bad about trying to scare my brother and taking him out to egg houses on false pretenses. Yep, I could be quite an ass to my little brother, but as time passed we became closer. We both have businesses of our own, great kids and many fond memories of Nansemond County and all of the things we did.
Gill and Drew TrotmanI’m sorry bro’. You know that I love you, but I know you weren’t so sure when we were growing up.

7 thoughts on “How do you like your eggs?”

  1. To answer your title question, I love my eggs as scrambled with lots of bell pepper, mushrooms and onions. Great post you have today.

  2. Such an interesting story. It’s great that you have been able to resolve your differences here. I know I had issues with my brothers as well. It’s been great to get closer while older.

    1. Maybe I wrote it to absolve myself from being such a mean big brother. We do get along well now and talk almost weekly even though we are miles apart.

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