Night of the Great Pumpkin

Began the morning with breakfast and two quick Disney shorts. Chip and Dale think Donald's "Trailer Horn" is an amusement park ride and keep jumping on it. Don doesn't have much luck chasing them away. "Chip and Dale" is the first short where they're named. Donald chopped down their log for his fireplace. They have to keep it from getting burned.

As I hurried off to work, I didn't see a huge branch that had fallen over the metal railings on the ramp into Oaklyn and rode smack into it. Ouch! I broke it, but it slammed me hard in the side of my head before I did. It hurt when it happened, but seems to be all right other than a bruise and scraped spot now. 

Fortunately, that was the worst thing that happened all day. The Acme wasn't busy in the slightest this morning. It picked up a little bit around 11:30-12, then died out again. We're between holidays, and Halloween isn't a big food holiday anyway. More people will be buying candy, party trays, or ready-made food than actual dinners. I was in and out with no trouble.

Put on It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown as I ate lunch when I got home. While the rest of the Peanuts gear up for Halloween, Linus is more excited about waiting for the Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch. He claims that on Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin will bring toys to all the good little children. Against her better judgement, Sally joins him. Elsewhere, Charlie Brown has trouble trick or treating, and Snoopy prepares for Veteran's Day by fighting the Red Baron. 

Chuck's insistence that Snoopy learn to do something useful ends with him learning magic and putting on a show. It's Magic, Charlie Brown when Snoopy turns Chuck invisible and can't figure out how to change him back. Chuck's upset, until he realizes that Lucy can't pull the football away if she can't see him coming...

Headed off to the Thomas Sharp School even before the cartoon ended. We spent most of the time outside again. Though it's still windy and was a bit colder, it remains too nice to have them inside. I get so many requests to push them on the swings, even from the ones who are capable of pushing themselves! (Some of the girls in particular can really be "one with the air," as I told them.) We were out for so long, they were just moving the kids to the blacktop area in the back with the older ones as I left.

Watched Match Game '76 when I got home. Donald Ross, the long-time comedy and mystery writer husband of Patty Deusch (who could get just as strange as his wife), joined two wonderful sitcom comediennes this week, Betty White and the wonderful Isobel Sanford. Sanford in particular was a warm and grounding presence, and I wish she'd been on the show more often. 

Spent the rest of the night working on Maplepunzel. Hilary and Queen Gertie rally the troops. Hilary sends Foley the Rabbit and Eugenia the Bird to get the rest of the enchanted animals of Hope Springs to help. Queen Gertie sends Mackie, Maple, Hilary, and Jeff in the mirror on ahead to rescue Scott, Victor, and Betty and open the door to the castle before she and Mr. Eldridge show up with the army, since Maple knows her way around.

Mackie stays with Maple after the others leave. He realizes he's only seen power like hers in one other person...his late wife Penelope. Maple is Anna, the child Pavla took from them. Maple realizes it matches her story, and what Mackie says is true. Gertie comes in as they embrace and asks them both to join them for dinner. Mackie is happy to accompany the two loveliest ladies in the kingdom to dinner, even as Gertie snarks at him.

Switched to The Wild Wild West after dinner. "The Night of the Puppeteer" has James West looking for an assassin after a puppet show nearly kills a Supreme Court Justice. He's led to a room filled with life-sized marionettes, directed by a deformed man who was using his puppet crew to get back at the men who arrested him on false charges and disfigured him.

Finished the night at YouTube with The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. This is probably the most 1976 piece of programming in existence. Lynde, dodging the Osmonds trick-or-treating, ends up at a spooky manor owned by Billie "Witchiepoo" Hayes and his housekeeper Margaret Hamilton, aka the Wicked Witch of the West. They give him three wishes. The first has him as a glamorous trucker with Roz Kelly as his girl and Tim Conway as his rival for her affections. In the second, he's a sheikh, Florence Henderson is the beautiful British object of his affections, and Conway is a Foreign Legion officer. He gives the witches the third, creating the Halloween disco of their dreams. In between, Betty White as Miss Halloween is disgusted that Lynde is her date, and we have KISS playing three of their biggest songs, "Detroit Rock City," "Beth," and "King of the Night Time World."