Grandma Lu Tells A Halloween Story

Marleewood was all decorated for Halloween on the outside and in the inside. It just looked wonderful. There were pumpkins and flowers and colored leaves and even a little toy horse in the hallway that was all decorated for the Fall Season. There had been practice runs in the kitchen area for the next One More Bite cooking show that was going to be aired soon. It smelled so good in there.
Oh look, Marleewood has a visitor today, It's Grandma Lu! Do you remember she had been gone for awhile on vacation.? Grandma Lu waved at everybody and gave out hugs to everyone that wanted one. Then she said, "Who wants to hear a story?" Everybody clapped and said, "We do, we do!" Those of the children that knew Grandma Lu knew that she loved to tell stories. When her kids were little they used to have bonfires with bales of hay and hot dogs and marshmallows. When it started to get dark all the kids would say, "Tell us a story please, please." She would laugh and say "Okay, is everybody ready?" They would all laugh and shout, but then would get really quiet so they could hear the story. Now she is older, but still loves to tell stories; she began.

Grandma Lu said, "Who knows how come we have jack o'lanterns at Halloween time?"  Nobody knew so Grandma Lu opened up her book and started telling the story about Stingy Jack. (Her version) Oh he was a mean old man. He didn't like anybody. He didn't even smile at little kids. Do you know what else? He never washed his face and hands. His face was always dirty too. Yuk! He lived by himself and didn't ever want to talk to anybody either. So he didn't have visitors come to his house. He would never give people presents on their birthday or buy them nice things because he loved them. No one wanted to be his friend because he played naughty tricks on them all the time. Wouldn't that be awful? We love to laugh and play and have company don't we?" All the children laughed and said, "Yes we do! Why would anybody act mean like that?" Well Grandma Lu said, "Well we just can't even guess, can we? Sometimes there are people just like that. It's too bad isn't it? It's lots more fun to be clean and happy."

"Well one day he played one trick too many. The man he played the trick on chased him up into a tree and wouldn't let him come down for a long time. He made Stingy Jack promise to be a good man or he wouldn't let him down from the tree. He said that if he didn't promise he would sneak up by his house and play a trick on him too! Well that scared Stingy Jack so he promised that he would be good. So the man let him down from the tree."
"Since Stingy Jack was mean he thought other people might be mean too, so he decided to make himself a lantern. A lantern is like a flashlight only with a candle in it sometimes to be used outside.
 He lived in Ireland. That is a country far far away. It was so many years ago that they didn't even have pumpkins where he lived. Can you believe that? There wouldn't be any pumpkin patches then would there? Anyway
Stingy Jack found an old turnip. This is a picture of some turnips. Well he found a way with a stick to take all the insides out of one of those turnips, then he put a little candle in it. Wow, he could see in the dark with that little turnip. Do you know why Stingy Jack thought he needed a lantern? He wanted to be able to see in the dark because he was afraid that people he had been mean to wanted to scare him. If he had a lantern he wouldn't be scared then he would just laugh at them.
So now you know how we got to have fun on Halloween with scary costumes and fun costumes and sometimes not even any costumes just some stuff on our

faces. Remember Stingy Jack had stuff on his face. It was called dirt!"
This little story has been told to children for many years and in different ways. So over all these years and years Stingy Jack got famous for his lantern. So now we call them jack o'lanterns. Big folks carve them out for us with sharp knives and try to make scary faces. They aren't too scary though are they, just lots of fun. I see a little boy, Kylan. He has a yellow shirt on. He is taking out all of the seeds and yukky stuff out of the pumpkin. He is going to make a jack o'lantern too.
Here are some jack o'lanterns that Grandma Lu  thought were cute.

See how the candle inside the pumpkin gives out light, but still has a funny face. People decorated their front porches with jack o'lanterns. Do you see the picture with four (4) jack o'lanterns on their porch. One (1) is scary, one (1) is silly, one (1) looks like a funny cat, and one (1) is goofy with a happy smile. Halloween is fun isn't it?
The last picture is Sawyer with his coat on in the dark showing us his family's jack o'lanterns.