A BANNER NIGHT

For the past few weeks, my neighbor catty-corner across the street has flown a U.S. flag on one side of his garage door, and a Trump flag on the other. He and his wife have lived there for years, but I had never met him, until this past Saturday.

As has become my custom in the years since The Kid aged out of trick-or-treating, this past Saturday I pulled a chair out front of the house and sat, with a big bowl of candy. This year I wore a (protective) mask, and lined the pieces of candy up in a row six feet away from my chair. Time passed, dusk thickened into night, and no kids at all showed. I could see that my neighbors were out in front of their Trump-flagged garage, doing the same thing. They were looking at me, so I waved to them. They waved back.

"I don't think we're going to get anybody," called the wife.

"Not many, anyway," I called back.

I sat there for hours, reading old Gold Key Grimm's Ghost Stories comics from the '70s and taking far too many samples from my own candy bowl. Over that time I got four, count 'em four, trick-or-treaters; I gave a generous donation to each of their bags. The atmosphere was bitterly sad, with the oppressive sense of unchecked plague. I was about to pack up and go inside when I heard somebody approaching. It was my neighbor, masked.

He had brought his own bowl of candy across the street, and held it out to me from a social distance; a cordial gesture that I don't think would have occurred to me. Plus, he had the Tootsie Rolls Fruit Chews; big favorites of mine.

I took one. He encouraged me to take more. I did. He took some treats from my bowl.

He told me his name, and I told him mine. He pointed to the BIDEN HARRIS sign The Kid put in our front window.

"Is Biden gonna win?" he asked, anxiously.

"I don't know," I said. "I sure hope so."

He was, sure enough, wearing a red baseball cap, backwards. He turned it around.

"I got the Trump thing going" he said.

"I'm not a fan," I said, shrugging. "But you know...neighbors."

"Neighbors!" he enthusiastically agreed, raising a fist in solidarity.

A native of Illinois, he's worked here in Arizona as a skilled machinist since 1981, for the same "mom and pop" defense contractor. He looked a little older than me.

He seemed like a sweet guy. I didn't ask him what made him a Trump fan; I was afraid the answer would depress me. He evinced great enthusiasm for marijuana, and I also decided not to point out that his preferred candidate is no particular friend to the weed industry.

Indeed, after his initial question and my reply, the only political content in our chat came when he said: "I think Nancy Pelosi put a curse on us when she tore up Trump's speech."

I wanted to say that if Pelosi was that potent a witch, then I hope she cursed Trump's chances at re-election. But I didn't; I just shrugged again, as if to suggest it was an interesting theory.

He invited me to come over and burn a fat one with him sometime if I wanted. I said something about how I don't do that much anymore. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I only tried weed once, back in the '80s, and then only because a gorgeous woman offered to "shotgun" me. Unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale; like Clinton, I didn't notice any high.

It occurred to me after hearing my neighbor's rhapsodies, and all those of many friends over the years, and documentaries I've seen in which weed is treated like a subject for porn, that the vilely exaggerated and hypocritical anti-drug propaganda to which I was exposed as a kid must have really taken hold in my psyche. Certainly there has never been a product that got better reviews, by word-of-mouth, than weed, that I've never seriously tried.

Anyway, late this afternoon I happened to step outside, glanced over at my neighbor's house, and...he's taken his flags down. The day before Election Day, and he's taken his Trump flag down.

Does he just figure the die is cast at this point? Or did his brief exposure to me cause him to reconsider his position?

Yeah, that's probably it.

I don't really have a point in all this. It's Election Eve, my vote is cast, and I'm stress-writing.

If you haven't already, please for God's sake go vote, unless you plan to vote for Trump, in which case please for God's sake stay home and eat leftover Halloween candy. Or better yet, change your mind and go vote for Biden.

Peace. Love. Community. Kindness to neighbors. I don't think we'll regret any of these.

God bless America. See you on the other side.