Del Stone Jr.

Del and Mladen review ‘Pumpkinhead’

January 13, 1989

Image courtesy of MGM/UA.

“Pumpkinhead” Starring Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D’Aquino and Florence Shauffler. Directed by Stan Winston. 86 minutes. Rated R. Amazon Prime.

Del’s take

They had me at the cicadas.

If I remember the South for anything it will be sluggish July afternoons, when the chore of taking a breath is like sucking a wad of steamed broccoli into your lungs, as cicadas hidden within the needles of longleaf pines screech and screech and screech screech screech. According to folklore the infernal bugs “hibernate” underground for 17 years until one night they awaken to scale a nearby slash pine – yes, it’s always at night – squeeze from their shell, pump up their wings and fly away to enjoy a brief yet incandescent third act of noisy fornication.

That rhythmic screeching, like chalk chalk chalk on a blackboard, is stamped onto my brain. So, when I heard it used as an audio effect in “Pumpkinhead” I knew the story was taking place somewhere below the Mason-Dixon, where the ever-increasing heat has baked the brains out of everybody who lives there, transforming them into Trump supporters.

The horror.

I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying “Pumpkinhead’s” other charms. The movie, which was released way back in 1989, has become a cult favorite despite early panned reviews. The directorial debut of special effects wizard Stan Winston, “Pumpkinhead” inspired a straight-to-video sequel, two made-for-TV sequels, a comic book from Dark Horse and even a video game.

Plus, it stars one of my favorite underrated actors, Lance Henriksen, who appeared in several James Cameron movies along with Bill Paxton and Jeanette Goldstein. He brings just the right touch of doom to his role as grieving father Ed, who sets off the horrific chain of events in “Pumpkinhead.”

The story goes like this: As a young boy, Ed witnessed a man being killed by a monster and knows that with the help of the right people, he can summon a demon to avenge the death of his young son Billy, who was accidentally run over by a dirt bike rider who had come to the back woods with his friends to party.

With the guidance of Haggis (Florence Shauffler), a crone who lives in the deep woods, Ed summons the Pumpkinhead demon and sets it loose on the teens, choosing to disregard her warning that Pumpkinhead is as dangerous to those who evoke its presence as those intended to receive its wrath.

The result is well-choreographed and photographed slaughter that follows a predictable path with only a slight deviation there at the end. Lessons will be taught and for some, learned, while for others there may be no moral to this story.

“Pumpkinhead” is one of those fun B movies that works if you can get past the threadbare writing and horror movie clichés. It calls forth an eerily gothic atmosphere you have never seen from Henry James or even V.C. Andrews. Henriksen delivers his patented emotionally wounded performance – you can’t help but sympathize with the guy, even if events leading up to his actions follow a corny, well trodden horror movie trail.

The real star here is the Pumpkinhead demon, which I thought worked very, very well. It’s a movie monster you haven’t seen before and in ways reminded me of the atavistic horror of “Alien.” It produces a similar quality of dread, even if the cornpone story doesn’t.

“Pumpkinhead” has lots of gross and gore, which should forestall whiny lectures from Mladen about R ratings and blood spatter. It’s a necessity for any serious horror movie collector or fan. Watch it in 2021 about mid-October, after the real horror of 2020 has mostly faded from memory.

I give it a B.

Mladen’s take

Del and I have been friends for a long time. And, still, he’s simply unable to judge the depth and breadth of my intolerance for inadequate moviedom mayhem, violence, and cussing.

“Pumpkinhead” is a good movie. I throw it an A- for the superb creature effects, which offset the movie’s quasi-“Deliverance” vibe. However, there are no dismemberments or intestines spilling from sliced abdomens. Shoot, plenty of blood is spilled, but no depictions of arterial pulse squirting. Sure as hell there is very little swearing, if any, that I recall and there is definitely no damned nudity. So, forgive me Del, but I’m whining, anyway, though, really, it’s closer to satisfied grumbling because the “Pumpkinhead” plot is solid.

In fact, I had little trouble overlooking the plot’s trigger, a grieving father mischaracterizing the city slickers’ accidental mistreatment of his geeky son. What unfolds is horror movie commentary on the ruin that engulfs those seeking revenge. For, you see, Ed the father becomes entwined with the monster he unleashes. When Pumpkinhead kills, Ed feels it.

—

Quick, what excellent recent movie uses the same type of symbiotic relationship between man and beast as an integral part of the story? Answer: “Sputnik.”

—

It’s Pumpkinhead who has me enamored by this late 1980s film. This is a lovingly, carefully, patiently, and nicely crafted terror animal. The only non-practical, i.e. without makeup, and non-mechanical visual effect in the movie is blurred and swaying filmography showing Ed sensing that Pumpkinhead is about to strike.

Pumpkinhead, by the way, is a tall guy in a costume. The creature is a decaying pink and skeletal. It has no hair, a tail, claws for hands, pseudo-hooves for feet, and long bony protrusions from the shoulders. Its legs at the knees bend like a heron’s, forward, if I recall accurately. Its teeth are long, crooked, and cracked and eyes white, opaque, and all-seeing. Pumpkinhead is a conjured beast, maybe risen from the fires of hell, making a living in the material world. Pay attention to the shrunken monster’s face when it’s re-buried.

Pumpkinhead’s interaction with reality as we understand it is very nicely executed in its namesake film.

There’s our nightmare walking past a window as though taking a leisurely stroll while the kid killers inside the cottage talk about what to do. When Pumpkinhead prowls through the house, it ducks beneath doorways. It swivels and tilts its head to listen. And, Pumpkinhead has no trouble looking straight at you while contemplating, I imagine, what to do next. It kills your ass and then hangs around for a moment to watch the reaction of your friends. There are no rampages. Just a methodical hunt to pick off the offending, big-hair youths. Wait till you see how the monster decides to handle a rifle. Pumpkinhead is scary as hell because it’s very human.

To me, Pumpkinhead has a subtler charisma than the Xenomorph in “Alien,” more natural finesse than the Predator in “Predator,” and a finer malevolence than Freddy in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

It’s my hope that no dumbass 21st century producer decides to re-make “Pumpkinhead.” This is a story and a monster that stand on their own. The beast borne of revenge shouldn’t be risked by a crappy re-do.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.

Del Stone Jr. / Chat GPT

I have amazing news for you homeowners who may not be up on your pest lore.

This amazing information comes to us from the Allentown Morning Call, which is a newspaper with a strange name, almost as strange as Playground. Allentown is in Pennsylvania, where all the pests now hold respectable positions in the state legislature or the Mafia.

Amazing pest fact No. 1: Roaches move at 14.5 mph. This fact is both amazing and helpful, because now I know that I need only move at a speed of 15 mph to escape a roach, which will save me valuable effort because I usually move at a speed of 100 mph when escaping a roach.

Amazing pest fact No. 2: If you squash a yellow jacket, it releases a substance that attracts other yellow jackets, which apparently have signed a death pact with one another because they will sting any living thing within a 15-foot radius. If you stand 16 feet from the scene of the crime, whistle and look around as if you had no idea what was happening, the yellow jackets will only hold you for questioning.

Amazing pest fact No. 3: You can tell the temperature by counting the chirps of a cricket. All you do is count the chirps in 13 seconds, add 40, and you have the temperature. Isn’t that amazing! I must add that to my collection of other sophisticated weather forecasting techniques, such as: You can tell the wind direction by licking your finger and holding it up, or you can tell if it’s going to rain by washing your car;

Amazing pest fact No. 4: Rats can fall 30 feet without being hurt, jump 3 feet straight up, swim half a mile and climb up pipes 1½ to 4 inches in diameter. Sounds like we should scare up some of these rats and enter them in the Olympics. I’ll bet Michael Dukakis couldn’t do those things. And he wants to be president.

Amazing pest fact No. 5: A female mouse gives birth about 19 days after mating and can mate again in two days. Mice have about six young per litter and can produce six to 10 litters per year. The young are ready to reproduce in two months.

Obviously, if this were true, we would all be eating cheese and chewing toilet paper into little nest mounds. But man, due to his superior ability to do dumb things, has solved the mouse problem by inventing the concept of pet mice, which means the surplus mice are given to children to be mauled to death.

Amazing pest fact No. 6: The article says, “Although bats are hated and feared, they are beneficial.” Then it goes on to say how many mosquitoes a bat eats, blah blah blah. On paper, bats are fine. Pickled in a jar, even better. But the minute I see some screeching thing flapping at me out of the dark with leathery wings, beady rat-like eyes and a mouth full of teeth, I will assume it is not a friend of man and shoot it with the nearest large-bore elephant gun.

This column was published on Thursday, Sept. 8, 1988 in the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

I want to relate to you diet-conscious consumers an important health tip about shopping in supermarkets. To put it bluntly, if you value your health, you will stop snooping in my cart to see what kind of food I buy.

I didn’t want to say anything, but the fact is you’re getting awfully snotty about the way you treat those of us who thrive on low-fiber, artificially preserved and colored food clods.

I didn’t notice you at first. I’d go striding into the supermarket like the General MacArthur of consumers and buy these food things that are so dangerous Iraq and Iran have been hurling them at each other for years.

But now I have to watch myself. If there’s nothing in my cart that is (A) green, (B), alive, (C) looks like a road kill or (D) is not usually associated with the act of eating, I get really dirty looks, as if I’d entered the store wearing a University of Libya T-shirt.

I was watching one of you health-conscious consumers the other day. You arrived at the supermarket at 10:30 in the morning wearing a coat and tie, like one of the Stepford Husbands. At 10:30 in the morning I’m still tripping over the bags under my eyes.

You went straight to the produce department, and it is a known fact among us food-clod eaters that nothing edible has ever been found in that section except the time some kid dropped a Sno-Cone.

You chose some ropy green things and some warty yellow things and this gross-looking sac-like thing that resembled The Weed Brain That Crawled Out Of The Mulch Pit (broccoli), and I can’t believe how you fussed over your choices, as if you should do anything but take them outside and have them shot.

Then you visited the seafood section, where you bought something that, if it had crawled up on the beach, the governor would have called out the National Guard. You bought it for a Halloween prank, right? You bought it to hide in your worst enemy’s mailbox. Surely you weren’t going to eat that.

You passed up the canned Roni food things and bought uncooked pasta. What can you do with uncooked pasta, except maybe pave your driveway, right? Oh, and you can make those cool string necklaces, just like they do in Third World nations, except they usually eat them after wearing them.

On to the beverage section. You bought – what was that? – bottled water? Bottled water is OK if, say, nuclear war breaks out and it’s either that or radioactive sewer runoff, but to actually pay American devalued dollars for a bottle of water when you could have bought good old American cheap beer – which is beneficial to the heart when consumed in quantities that aren’t expressed in the plural form – is a real tragedy of consumerism.

But that’s OK. If you want to eat rabbit chow and never experience the thrill of clogged arteries, that fine by me.

But the safe of your health, don’t sneer at my food clods. I may invite you over for dinner.

This column was published in the Thursday, September 1, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

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Everybody experiences them: moments when you commit acts so unspeakably embarrassing that you wish you could drop from the face of the planet. Here are some of mine:

1. It is the night of the newspaper’s customer appreciation party. A group of us is going by way of car caravan to a nightspot for dancing. I am riding with reporter Robert Kuntz and Lifestyle writer Debbie Lord. We pull into the parking lot. A woman ahead of us, driving a Datsun pickup truck, stops for no apparent reason. We wait. Finally, I shout from the back seat, “Don’t you just hate it when people driving Datsun pickup trucks stop in parking lots for no apparent reason?”

Kuntz says, “Del, that is MY WIFE.”

Time for Del to die.

2. I’m sitting in the newsroom. It’s a slow night. Tom Conner, who at that time was city editor, is sitting across the room. I decide to harass him by sending messages to his computer terminal. To do that, I must type in his terminal number, the message command and the message itself, then press a key to execute the command. I write, “You are a magpie,” and send it. He doesn’t react, but moments later a reply appears on my computer screen: “What?” I answer, “You are a magpie!” Tom still doesn’t react, but suddenly the managing editor appears at my desk and says, “Del, what do you mean, ‘I’m a magpie?’ ”

I had typed in the wrong terminal number.

Time for Del to be unemployed.

3. I’m in college. I’ve been assigned to conduct my first interview. My victim is a poet. He recently published a collection of poems about the Vietnam War. His book is not one of those vanity press jobs; somebody paid him real money to publish his work. He also was an unwitting participant in a military drug experiment, but he doesn’t want to discuss that in our interview. The subject is poetry.

I meet him in the student lounge. He is a charming man, so charming that I tell him I think he should have given his book a different title. We get to talking about writing, and it so happens I’m an aspiring writer, so I pull out the rough draft of a manuscript and demand a critique. I also manage to yawn.

I’m supposed to get a mug shot of the man. I take him to the college newspaper office. They know nothing about taking this man’s picture and, of course, a photographer is nowhere to be found. One of the editors, who is now a reporter at the Pensacola News Journal, says, “Oh, yeah. You’re the guy who was involved in the military drug experiment.”

Del is batting a thousand on his first interview.

4. I’m doing a videotaped presentation about tennis for a college speech class. I say, “Tennis is a game everybody can enjoy.” I pause, and then I say, “Of course, if you’re handicapped you can’t.”

Time for Del to crawl under a rock.

5. I’m in the ninth grade. I’m mad because my parents won’t let me wear bell-bottomed pants. I stalk to the bus stop, pouting. Somebody tells me my shirt is on backwards.

I give up.

This column was published in the Thursday, Aug. 25, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

ChatGPT

This is the scenario: If I am not at work in 10 minutes I will no longer have a need for banks, which is where I happen to be right now, cruising in my car across the parking lot at Warp Factor Get-Your-#$%&*-Out-of-My-Way as I race for the convenient drive-through Teller Windows from Hell.

This is not to say the tellers themselves are from hell. The tellers are always very nice to me and do little extras, like slip me an extra $1 million (ha, ha, that’s a teller-related joke for the bank management). But drive-through windows are the spawn of Satan.

As I swerve into the driveway on two wheels I see that three windows are open and two cars are in line at each window. An optimist would say I had a 33.3 percent chance of choosing the window that would become available quickest; a pessimist would say I had a 33.3 percent chance of choosing the slowest, and then he would run over the optimist. I choose the middle window.

But nobody is moving, which means ALL the windows are slowest, and this is beginning to resemble a visit to the Twilight Zone. Since nobody is behind me, I back up and wait.

Immediately, an entire six-lane expressway of cars appears in my rear-view mirror, which means I must commit to a window or be lost forever in Drive-Through Limbo. I choose the window to my right.

The lead car at the far-left window zooms away. Then the lead car at the middle window zooms away. Then the other car at the far-left window zooms away. I am ready to start loading rifles.

Meanwhile, the original lead car at my window is STILL sitting there, its driver probably not aware that if he does not hurry up and conclude the stupid little piece of banking tripe he is conducting; major exploratory surgery on his brain will begin via tire iron.

Finally, the lead car at my window lumbers off, and the person directly ahead of me, who is riding a motorcycle of all things, lumbers up the window.

I wait. And wait. And wait. Generations live and die as I wait. Civilizations rise and fall, the sun explodes, the universe stops expanding as I wait.

I begin studying the person ahead of me, the way a driver who is contemplating shifting his car into gear and running over that person would study him. My acute powers of observation – not to mention the fact that I overhear him – tell me he is making a withdrawal, which everyone knows is the dumbest, most time-consuming business matter you can conduct at a drive-through window, short of having your entire credit history set to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Finally he finished. He goes through a checklist of motorcycle-related safety measures that would shame most airline pilots, and then he leaves. It’s my turn.

As I insert my money and deposit slip into the handy Pneumatic Tube from Hell, a motorist behind me races his engine.

Hey buddy, I think. Chill out.

This column was published in the Thursday, Aug. 18, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

ChatGPT

This is the story of a woman, a river, and a concussion.

The woman’s name is Debbie; the river has many names, none of them printable here; and the concussion … I guess it was my fault.

I told Debbie before we got in the canoe that I did NOT know how to steer. I said, “Debbie, before we begin I should warn you: The last time I tried to steer a canoe, there were some problems.”

Oh?

“Yes. A few deaths were involved.”

But no. Not only did she suggest I sit in the back of the canoe, she actually encouraged me to sit in the back of the canoe. “Del, you sit in the back of the canoe,” is what she said. Somehow, she has forgotten that part. Maybe it’s the amnesia.

The back of the canoe is the nerve center of the Canoe Guidance System. The person who sits in the back of the canoe must have the lightning reflexes of a cat that is about to be taken to the vet. He must have the woodlands savvy and bravado of a Marlin Perkins with his premium paid in full. And he must have several beers under his belt.

It was sunny between the downpours. The temperature was 86.8 degrees, the humidity 78 percent, winds variable except near the waterspouts – a perfect day for canoeing down a snake-infested river.

We pushed off from our launch point and within seconds we were gliding effortlessly down the river – sideways. Then, disaster struck. We hit a “stob.”

I tried to tell Debbie, in my best Grizzly Adams voice, that a “stob” is an underwater stump, but she thought I was making up the word. This argument lasted all day. I would say, “HOLD ON, WE’RE ABOUT TO HIT A STOB!” and Debbie would say, “Oh, you’re just making that up!” and then CRASH! The canoe would collide with a stob and Debbie would sustain head injuries.

Anyway, we hit our first stob. We heard a crash. The canoe stopped dead in the water. We held our breath, like U-boat captains waiting for the depth charge to go off. The canoe turned completely around and again we were gliding effortlessly down the river – backward.

That was as good a time as any stop at the handy shoreline, straighten out our canoe and swill beer. We had a bend in the river to negotiate downstream and we would need all our wits.

OK, so we managed to make the turn, but – this is the part Debbie’s attorney wants to hear – I wasn’t able to stop turning (see, I took the rap) and we zoomed into low-hanging branches at Canoe Warp Factor 8. Debbie, remembering what I’d said about snakes lurking in branches just like these, tried to keep them out of her face. But they whipped back and smacked her; she toppled over and banged her head on the side of the canoe. Hence the concussion.

Debbie has foolishly suggested we go canoeing again. Only this time, SHE wants to sit in the back. Every time she says that, a cold, soulless smile creeps into her expression.

So I’d better drop the skeet shooting idea.

This column was published on Thursday, Aug. 11, 1988 in the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Google AI.

Here is everything you need to know about the contemporary music scene:

(Important note to readers who are about to stop reading and write me nasty letters calling me a tone-deaf burrowing parasite for ridiculing contemporary music: This is not meant to be taken seriously. I am engaging in what is known as “satire.”)

SONGS

All contemporary songs fit into one of these categories:

(A) I want to have sex with you.

(B) Why did you leave me just as I was about to persuade you to have sex with me?

(D) How can we have sex if you keep overturning my drink in my lap?

(E) I am so happy to be having sex with you, but I don’t think I like you.

(F) Now that we have finished having sex, you can get lost.

(G) I wish I could have sex with some other person.

(H) I like sex almost as much as I like contemporary music.

VIDEOS

When a filmmaker sets out to shoot a music video, these are his priorities:

(A) We will need a naked woman in chains.

(B) We will need a table, and several drinks sitting on top of the table, so the musician can turn over the table, spill the drinks and break the glasses, and we will show this process in slow motion at least 20 times.

(D) We will need a sunset, into which the musicians will walk at the end of the video, free of any worldly concerns.

(E) We will need jillions of dollars to pay these musicians who are free of any worldly concerns.

VJs

A “video jockey” must admit several intrinsic truths about his job:

(A) I am a parasite, and the world of music is my host.

(B) I am doing this only because I have no musical talent besides pounding out a percussion sequence with a spoon as I listen to the radio and fantasize that I am a rock star.

(C) Because musicians need me to publicize their work, and because I appear on television, I am an important person, and you are not, so I will treat you like an invertebrate.

MUSIC CRITICS

Music critics face a host of concerns about their work:

(A) How can I convince my readers that this album is more important to their personal well-being than the mounting national deficit?

(B) I am interviewing this rock musician, who has a purple Mohawk, a bone in his nose, earrings down to his buttocks, a tattoo on his cheek that says, “I BRAKE FOR NOTHING,” and this musician has fallen off his chair twice and has a big gob of drool sliding down his chin and his eyes are spinning in their sockets like a washing machine tub in the rinse cycle, and this musician writes songs with unforgettable lyrics such as “Oooh oooh, baby, oooh, I want to have sex with youuu,” and I am supposed to write a review praising this musician’s eloquent commentary on the human condition, as opposed to the nihilistic rantings of his contemporaries? Boy, do I love this job!

This column was published in the July 21, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Photo courtesy of the Australian Institute of Marine Science

My ex-best friends Jim Shrine and Joann Schumann, who work here at the newspaper, recently returned from a vacation in Mexico.

They didn’t invite me, of course.

But that’s OK. I don’t mind. Really. Just because those two drain clogs go off to an exotic foreign country for a carefree week of sipping margaritas and reef diving, and leave me here to only dream about such a splendid vacation as I wile away my miserable existence waiting for my $2 Renuzit rebate to come in the mail so I can buy food for another month, well, that’s no reason for me to hold a grudge.

Besides, I’m going to have a fine vacation myself, right here in exotic Fort Walton Beach, a decision cheerfully made for me by my bank account. I’ve made plans for all kinds of exotic adventures during my week off, and I’m sure those two margarita-sipping, reef-diving debauchees will wish they’d never heard of Mexico.

This is my itinerary:

FRIDAY – I get new glasses. YAY! I have to pay for them. BOO! I get a haircut! YAY! I get skillions of little itchy hairs down my back. BOO!

SATURDAY – We’re going canoeing. For those of you who are not rugged outdoorsmen such as I and can’t, say, fell a redwood by gnawing through it, I should explain that a canoe is a boat-like object that you turn over, spilling everything inside the cooler and contributing to the massive Coldwater River beer deficit. This should be fun, as I am told snakes sometimes drop into the canoe, and married couples who cannot maneuver their canoes actually engage in the act of divorce, right there amid the natural splendor of the river!

SUNDAY – We’re having a combination pool-birthday party for Tracy Wenzel, Debbie Lord and Kris Wheeler, YAY! I really should buy them presents, BOO! How long does it take to wrap $5 worth of Pez?

MONDAY – Ray Aldridge and I shoot pool for the Championship of the Known Universe – if he doesn’t take his wife Nancy and his daughter April sailing on their new boat. I’m sure he will make the correct decision and shoot pool.

TUESDAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY – I rent TWO – count ’em – TWO VIDEOS, and make one of my special pizzas, what I call the Cholesterol Express Pizza. The folks at the video store had better save me a copy of “Fatal Attraction.”

THURSDAY – I’m going out to dinner with Sandy and Dave Jacobs – if they invite me. If not, I will probably sit at home, lonely and starving and wondering if I will ever again have a chance to pick up a menu written in a foreign language and place an order for goat nostril flaps.

FRIDAY – This will be a carefree day of scrubbing the toilet and waiting for the mail. Maybe a bill will come. Take that, you reef-diving, margarita swillers!

SATURDAY – For today I’ve scheduled those last-day-of-vacation blues. Maybe I’ll spend the day plotting ways to make Jim and Joann sorry they didn’t invite me to Mexico.

This column was published in the Thursday, July 14, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

This was our campsite outside of Lessburg, Florida, in the early 1970s The campground was overrun with gnats. Photo by Del Stone Sr.

My camping adventure comes to a merciful close at a campground we christened “Gnat City.”

Gnat City lies somewhere in the vicinity of Leesburg, which lies somewhere in the vicinity of the Twilight Zone. Gnat City is memorable for (A) hordes of gnats that can exist only in your eyes and nostrils, (B) a lake that possibly hosts tiny, amoeba-like creatures that crawl into your eyes and lethally infect your brain, (C) a gigantic watermelon patch featuring real watermelons in various stages of decomposition, (D) wild birds that will actually fly up to you as you eat and take a dump in your plate, and (E) Satan, the goat with devil eyes.

It is hot when we arrive; it is hot after the sun goes down; it is hot the next day, when, for some incomprehensible reason, we decide to stay. Other than that, it is a nice place, except for:

The gnats – We are talking biblical plague here. The gnats crawl into your ears, your eyes and your nose. If you aren’t careful, you breathe and swallow them. This just about covers the gamut of all human functions, rendering life essentially impossible outside of little screened-in enclosures. Sitting in these enclosures is a truly memorable way to spend a vacation in Central Florida.

The lake – The lake is populated with various animals that are not friends to mankind: alligators, snakes and amoebas that eat their way into your brain, just like in that episode of “Night Gallery,” causing a slow, agonizing death. Fortunately, we go swimming only when we have to, such as when we are attacked by gnats while darting from screened-in enclosure to screened-in enclosure and have to seek refuge underwater.

*This is me feeding a piece of bread to a scrub jay. The jays were so tame they would land on your hand to take food.*

The watermelon path – I feel like Tom Sawyer as I skulk into the patch after dark to steal a watermelon. I chose a likely candidate, pick it up, and hand sinks into it to the wrist.

The birds – This is a true story. These wild birds, called scrub jays, are so tame they will perch on your hand and eat Wonder Bread, which may explain why so few of them exist anymore (I’m just kidding, little Wonder Bread elf who will clip this and send it to your corporate dungeon masters).

Satan, the devil goat – I call the goat Satan because it has vertical pupil slits for eyes, which remind me of a rock ’n’ roll album cover. Satan lives in a fenced-in enclosure around what I suspect is an open cesspool, which I believe is how Satan travels back and forth to hell to manufacture rock ’n’ roll albums. I notice the gnats don’t seem to bother Satan. Hmmm. Maybe the goat has something there.

At last, mournfully, it is time for our camping adventure to end. I will return to civilization, with is corrupting influences of color television and Jiffy Marts.

We load up the car, and it is with tears in my eyes that I watch the campground disappear behind us in a cloud of dust and gnats, painfully aware I could have spent the past two weeks in an Econo Lodge.

This column was published in the Thursday, June 16, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

On the way to Camp Do-Not we spotted this waterspout in the distance. Maybe you can see it in the red box. Or maybe I'm lying. By this time we were delerious with heat stroke because Dad refused to turn on the AC in the car because it dropped the gas mileage by 2 mpg. These days I run the car AC in the dead of winter with 8 inches of snow on the ground. Photo by Joyce Stone.

Sadly, it is time for us to end our idyllic week at Manatee Springs State Park and move on to another Campground from Unspoiled Hell.

In the 20 or so seconds it takes us to pack our belongings, I stop to reflect on the highlights of our visit:

(A) I found an opossum skull. Aside from satanic rituals, I could think of no practical use for it, but I kept it anyway. I now proudly display it in a cardboard box in the attic.

(B) Watching moths go up in little balls of fire in the kerosene lantern – an early, crude version of the electronic bug zapper.

(C) Picking up garbage the raccoons scattered during the night – the SAME garbage I picked up the day before, and the day before that, ad infinitum. This vicious cycle of scattering and picking up has been going on since the time Indians roamed the area and had their garbage scattered by raccoons. I think some of the garbage I picked up WAS Indian garbage.

As we depart, we wave a fond farewell to the Bobs, who have threatened to someday return to their home, if they can get Bob out of the lawn chair.

As we head south, despite my fervent desire that we turn north in the direction of home, we pass many fascinating sights. They were too expensive, so I don’t get to see them. But we stop at some of the less interesting sights, which include:

Reptile Land – This linchpin of the Florida tourism industry features, among other things, a caged duck that plays a piano. I am not kidding. You put a quarter in the slot and the duck uses its bill to bash out a tune worthy of any 10-year-old after $5,000 worth of lessons.

I also feel that Reptile Land sells a superior quality plastic alligator, and now one of those is on proud display with the opossum skull in the attic.

Weeki Wachee – I don’t actually see the show, but I use the bathroom in the lobby and I am impressed.

Miles and miles of dead orange groves – There they are in all their natural dead splendor, those famous Florida orange groves you hear are threatened every time the temperature plummets below 85. They are a stark reminder that Anita Bryant no longer lives in Florida.

We arrive at our new home, a campground on Sannibel Island. We call it “Camp Do-Not,” because everywhere you look is a sign telling you what you cannot do. We spend one night there, immobilized in our tent. Although the rules forbid it, we break camp and leave the next day.

We wend our way northeast, to the interior of Florida, where the humidity is always higher than the temperature, even inside most homeowners’ ovens, which few residents use because they find it less expensive and more convenient to do their cooking on the sidewalks.

There, we complete the final leg of our journey across the heart of darkness of Florida, and I promise that next week’s column will be the last I write about camping, at least until I run out of ideas again.

Next week: Satan, the devil goat.

This column was published in the Northwest Florida Daily News on June 9, 1988 and is used with permission.

About the author:

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

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