Growing up Bates: Spook Lane

Our church was....let's just say 'different.' I grew up going to Martinville Baptist Church. A building about 20 yards from my bedroom window. It was a family church, and seeing as two-thirds of the community was family (named "Martin" by the way), our family WAS the church.

Now-a-days churches give the kids an alternative to Halloween. Usually this includes something called a "Hallelujah" festival, carnival games, hot dog roast and a hay ride. But, when I was a kid, our church pretty much embraced the 'other' meaning of Halloween (in a fun way...not so much in an evil way). The adults and older teens would turn our entire church building into a Haunted House. My Sunday School teacher, Aunt Lexie, who was usually the sweetest lady ever, suddenly turned into a wicked witch who feed us 'brains and eyeballs' (spaghetti and peeled grapes). The pastor, who usually guided us in the ways of Lord, suddenly was a zombie walking around trying to eat our brains. As if the haunted house/church wasn't bad enough, the older teens created something so foul, so outrageous, that I only experienced it once, but after that I was never the same.

It was called Spook Lane.

Spook Lane resided in the creepy woods right behind the small country church. It was pitch black, lit only by creepy red lights and the occasional flashlight. The lane of evil, as I've come to call it, consisted of many of the normal elements that you would see in any modern day Halloween show - chainsaw wielding maniacs, zombies, the weird guy who stalks you because you wouldn't go to prom with him. But the most evil aspect of Spook Lane was Hell's Pit. It was a pit that was at least 20 feet deep (of course, I was like 7 years old, so it could have been 3 feet deep and felt like 20 feet deep). If you got caught anywhere on the lane by a teen, you got thrown into Hell's pit where the older, meaner kids would torture you for hours before letting you out. Not even your momma could save you. Perhaps this is why we all turned to Jesus.

Perhaps this is the reason that I have such a warped sense of humor now. I guess it will all come out in therapy.

Now when I see kids at church on Halloween night playing their safe little carnival games and dressed like a nun, or Jesus, or even Spiderman I smirk and think of our pastor, the Zombie.

Growing up Bates: The Redneck Slip and Slide

I guess I was around 7 or 8 years old when the Slip and Slide was ultra popular (yes, I am JUST that old). Anyway - I begged my parents for years it seemed (I'm sure it was only like 4 days) to buy us a slip and slide. I wanted the bright-yellow-banana-looking-plastic slip and slide! After hours of begging, pleading, and making a list of all of the "Pros" of the slip and slide (nevermind all of the "cons"), my dad finally gave in. But, of course, we couldn't afford to spend money on a REAL slip and slide,so dad decided to make his own out of a giant sheet of plastic. It was no ordinary sheet of plastic, it was a giant sheet of visquen (I have no idea how to spell it) that was covered in dirt! So, we tried it out...we took the water hose and wetted down the plastic and tried to slide. I was first. I ran from about 20 yards back and dove head first onto the make-shift, redneck slip and slide, and I slid about 2 1/2 inches before getting plastic burn! Not a good idea. 
   So, dad decides that he knows how to make it better. He gets out the Joy dishwashing liquid and pours the entire bottle on the plastic, then wets it down again with the water hose. I, being the brave (and stupid) kid that I was ran that 20 yards again (I don't know why I thought we had to be so stinking far back!), and hit the slip and slide head first again. This time I went whizzing down the plastic at the speed of light! It was so slippery that I didn't stop until I was about 10 feet PAST the plastic! So I was 10 feet away from the plastic covered in a dirt/soap misture, and I had soap in every orifice of my body. It was not pretty. Needless to say, that was the last slip and slide adventure at my house...but now, the sprinkler, that was a different story.