March 5, 2015
News Flash:Quad-Cities Miracle Mavens of Monthly Madness Missing, Ghost Appears
QCA, USA: The writing team of Gail McPike and Toni Hall, whose work is exclusively featured in 50+ Lifestyles magazine, have turned up missing. In spite of the best efforts of those around them, no report of their whereabouts has been issued. According to the editors and publishers of said magazine, repeated attempts to locate, phone or email the two have turned up no substantial clues.
The 50+ Lifestyles editor reports, “This isn’t the first time these two have disappeared. We always assumed they were working deep undercover, following up on leads from some shady character wearing a Humphry Bogart style hat and trench coat. Typically, they turn up with a story just minutes before we go to press. This time appears to be different.”
After lengthy discussion, the leadership at 50+ Lifestyles has reached a difficult decision. This month’s In and Out of the Quad-Cities will be written by a genuine ghost-writer. The whole ghost-writer thing goes way back in the book business. Founding Father Ben Franklin served not only as publisher and print setter but also as ghost writer and almanac maker. Here’s our try.
Ghosts, ghost stories and ghost writers in the sky
Most of us QCA folks see March the way Ebenezer Scrooge saw the Spirits of Christmas. During the 31 days of our third month, we will no doubt see the ghost of winters past and take a magical ride with the spirit of summers to come. Along the way, we’ll have some fun that will help us all forget the rigors of
surviving the winter of 2014-15.
Let’s take a tour of the things we didn’t get to do this year because of the nastiness of the winter weather. First, we didn’t get to attend a Super Bowl game day party. Oh, we had tons of invites, including a good food infused party with the proprietress of LeClare’s Crane and Pelican. Talk about the ghost of good stuff missed. The snow in front of our place was neck deep to a tall Leprechaun and blowing. The QCA streets were unfit for
driving unless you had an artic explorer’s vehicle. And, there we were snowed in; those goodies so close yet so far away.
Speaking of getting snowed. Current Trophy Husband Phil was determined to attend at least some semblance of a Super Sunday Party. He managed to finagle an invite to a party in the neighborhood. Clad in an outfit inspired by a cross between Nanook of the North, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and Kenneth Cole, he trudged down the hill and up the block. We are sure that along the way he heard the howl of the wild winds and occasionally had thoughts of death by hypothermia. We are happy to report, he survived the death march, but managed to catch a whopper of a cold.
Besides apparitions of weather channel variety, March is rich in ghost lore of the historical kind. Beware the Ides of March. We’ve all heard this admonishment. We are pretty sure it has
nothing to do with the 70s era one hit band with the song “Vehicle,” although having a vehicle to conjure up ghosts comes in handy to Elderly ladies of Roma decent.
March 15th is the Ides of March. Most of us relate to it as Julius Caesar’s bad day at work. But Caesar’s assassins being a paganistically religious lot, selected Julius’ last day based on its reputation as a good day to get rid of ghosts. Here’s the deal, back then the 15th of March commemorated the end of all things tied to last year. We’re going to do the same. Come March 15th, were going to officially put away all of our Christmas Decorations from last year.
Two more ghosts haunting the Quad Cities area are those of Saint Patrick of Ireland and Saint Joseph of Judah. Our Quad-Cities is host to the only bi-state St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the world. This year the big parade launches off on March 14th. There is also the St. Paddy’s Day Race (5K) as depicted on the cover of this literary periodical. All the good Irish kids will be
celebrating even if they don’t have a single Irish gene in their
collection.
This day celebrates the death of Saint Patrick, reported to have brought the Gospel to Ireland and cured the Misty Isles of their snake problem. Yep, Ireland is a snake free country, which we suspect makes it safer to sleep on the ground after consuming too many green beers.
Saint Joseph is none other than the Husband and Protector of Mary (think Mary and Joseph, no room at the inn). The fine Czech folks of Cedar Rapids have a quaint tradition of having their own parade on March 19th to celebrate the feast of St. Joseph. They drink red beer and eat special red bread and cakes to make the celebration more fun; but mostly the ones we hang out with drink red beer.
For those of you who are adventurous souls, mark your calendar for a road trip to Cedar Rapids Czech town. Be sure to bring your credit card because most of the places in Czech town will take Czechs but not checks… just kidding. They’ll accept Irish and Hungarians too.
Well we’ve played out our time, we ghost writers. Back in March of 1948, Stan Jones wrote the classic song “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Since then the song has charted at least a couple dozen times. But, we think it should be “Ghost Writers” in the sky.
April showers bring May flowers….
