ReTRo HouSeWiFe

Trick Or Treat

... Among many, one merry prank stands out in my mind. That which involved our town bootlegger Horace — called "Horse" - Tolliver.

One All Hallow's Eve he snuck out to sample a jug of trapped lightning he had stashed in a hollow tree, but when he groped inside his fingers touched not the jug but a cold, stone slab. Horse hauled the thing out and lit a match to study the rectangular thing which looked exactly like a headstone Further, painted in dead black were the words:

"Here lies old Horse
With this sad news:
'Done in too soon
By his own booze.'"

Horse's correct birth date followed the stanza, and the date of demise was given as Nov. 5th, six days away. Horse immediately fell into such a mighty scare that he didn't do a thing but sit in a rocking chair with his palms turned up until Nov. 10th when it dawned on him that, since he was still among the living, the headstone was a prank.

That left him time to concentrate once more on important matters like making up for lost time in the sampling of his commodity and conducting a grim search for the culprits who filched his jug from the hollow tree. - But he never found us.

By Iris Syndergaard, Ogden Standard-Examiner, Sunday, October 28, 1973