Michael D. Davis.

It started as a stupid task, a bit of fun, something to do with my buddy. Somewhere along the way, under the cover of darkness, this stupid task morphed into a three-hour voyage of two jolly, puerile nitwits. I don’t know what else I expected. And like most of my tales, this story deserves to be carved in stone or scribbled in crayon, but newsprint’s good enough for me.

We had the idea to take pictures of the local Halloween lights and decorations around town. That’s where it started. And when I say “we,” I mean myself, and the kid, Johnny, you know who I’m talking about, he also writes for this paper. He was back in town for a couple of days, and we thought we’d make the most of it.

The kid showed up at my house at eight, the sun was down, the moon was up, a chill was in the air. We loaded up and started down the road. We didn’t get far as the first set of decorations was just on the next block. The bad part was that I was on the wrong side of the street. I had to lean back in my seat as the kid pointed his camera around me to the yard opposite. And if that wasn’t enough of a hassle, the pictures kept coming out blurry. The kid changed lens, switched settings, tried flash on, tried flash off, switched settings again, all as we sat in the middle of the street with our hazards on. Finally, the right settings were found and the first good picture was taken. The gravestone for Anita and Harry Dix was our inaugural photo.

As we moved on through the streets of Toledo, looking for any lights and trying to remember where we had seen what in the daylight, we made a wager. The kid thought we’d get the cops called on us two times or less during our trip. I, of course, took the counter bet of three or more. I bet on our bad luck and still lost.

As the kid took pictures, I had the job of being the wheelman. I got us where we needed to go. I got the kid in the right spot so he could take the pic from the right angle. Sometimes that meant inching backwards up a dark street with my hazards on so he could snap a shot of a witch. Sometimes that meant driving until the kid asked where the hell I was going.

By the time we were done in Toledo, we needed gas. One trip to Casey’s and we were on to Tama. Like Toledo, we went up one street, then down another. At one point, we saw a fat raccoon in the street. I pointed it out, before the kid could get a picture, it descended into the sewer. He tried to get a picture of it in the sewer, but it didn’t work out. Although apparently the kid could hear the critter down there.

Eventually, we ended up next to one of my friends’ houses, Triston. He came out to chat for a bit. He raved about the tacos he just had, then imparted some wisdom on us that is probably applicable to most situations in life: “You gotta bite the ear of the dog.” Second thought, that may not have been wisdom.

When we got to State Street, I was nervous about stopping the car, so I pulled into the dollar store. I said to the kid that he could jump out, go take the pics, then come back. He said he was worried I’d drive away. I said, I promise I won’t drive away. The kid got out, went around the corner, I sat for a moment, then started to drive away. My plan was to just park behind the dollar store as a prank.

However, by the time I got to the corner and started to turn, I saw something in my mirror. The kid, like the Terminator or a dog off its leash, was running after the car. I could see him in my rearview mirror, legs pumping, arms swinging, all out sprinting towards the car. I started to laugh, and I started to laugh hard. As I did, I let off the accelerator and came to a stop sign. Tears were forming in my eyes, but I looked again in the mirror, and the kid was closing the distance. I turned again, went down the street, and back into the dollar store parking lot. I had to stop and put the car in park because I was laughing so hard my ribs hurt, and I was full-on crying. Since I was crying, I didn’t see the kid get back into the car, but I heard him. And the next thing I knew, he’d taken a picture of me with my red face, crying, laughing.

We worked on and managed to do some other juvenile things for our own entertainment. At one point, we saw a group of loiterers, teenagers, or whoever, hanging around in the dark. The kid pointed his camera at them, hit the button, the flash went off, then I hit the gas and we peeled out. The fact that I drive an ex-cop car probably made that situation a whole lot weirder for whoever that was.

By the end of the night, we’d spent three full hours going around Tama-Toledo taking pictures in the dark. It was time well wasted and well spent. And I have to say, I know plenty of words, but no sentence that I am able to string together will do justice to how funny the image of the kid running after my car was. It was one of those you had to be there moments. I can still picture him in my rearview mirror huffin’ and puffin’ away, chasing me down.