APRIL 7, 2024 – Because they were our immediate neighbors, I observed much about the Rathbuns, but based on what I later learned about them, I wish I’d inquired more when I’d had the chance. Their intense non-conformity made our family look entirely normal. A quick drive-by revealed that much about the Rathbuns was actually hidden: the big battered house stood amidst a layered industrial gauge junkyard in the thick of a vibrant jungle.
When Mother complained of the shade that the jungle cast upon her flower garden, Dad took matters into his own subversive hands. He persistently teased the Tarzan-vines to grow around the lower trunks of the scraggly offending trees that lined our boundary. His idea was to get the vines to kill the trees, whereupon he would then sever the vines at ground level. When the vines died, sunshine would return to our yard. That was the theory, anyway. It was actually an exceedingly long-term project and eventually abandoned. After a decade, the score was Nature 10; Dad zero.
Through the Amazonian border we could make out the remnants of what might have once been a wonderfully imaginative and even attractive rock garden. Entangled in the ground growth were stone foot bridges, evidence of small reflecting pools, and signs of once fanciful pillars made of semi-precious stones embedded in mortar—or so I imagined. Decades of untamed nature had obscured the details of whatever had once embellished one of the oldest grounds on Rice Street and perhaps in all of town.
One summer, I remember, old big headed white-haired John Rathbun had cleared a space for Mrs. Rathbun to grow some flowers. Her top choice, it turned out, were sunflowers, which ironically added to the shade factor and were well beyond reach of Dad’s surreptitious vine-growing counter-offensive.
The elderly couple were not always on the best of terms with each other. Their appearances suggested they’d lived with each other far longer than was good for either one of them, but on the other hand, I figured they no longer qualified for divorce. During the summer months we’d often hear Mrs. Rathbun berating John something fierce. I say “hear,” because even if they were standing just six feet away from our side of their jungle, we couldn’t get a good look at the ancient couple through the foliage. Her ragged voice confirmed our suspicions of her witch-based origins. The harangue was so long and loud, you could be excused for blaming the high decibel level on John’s deafness. But then we’d hear from deep inside the jungle, the old man’s muffled voice mutter, “Oh, shut up.” I decided that to a point he was more patient than hard of hearing.
I never saw Mrs. Rathbun wear anything except a black dress, black shoes with big heels and nylon stockings full of snags and holes. Likewise, I never saw John in any attire other than blue denim bib overalls and a long-sleeved shirt (no matter how warm the weather) that matched the color and condition of his rusty, two-toned brown Chevrolet pick-up truck. The family—they had an adult, live-in son my parents’ age named Arlan—also owned a sedan, as dark and green as the foliage that covered their once splendorous (possibly) rock garden. The car was at least as old as the pick-up and was used only on special occasions, such as when the three Rathbuns went a-visiting (I imagined), or perhaps in the tradition of my own grandparents while at their lake cabin, when necessity required a trip into town for supplies.
To us neighborhood kids, the whole Rathbun set-up was akin to what I later learned in law school to be “an attractive nuisance.” The combination of “old” and “overgrown”—not to mention the herd of cats that entered and exited the property at will—triggered our imaginations, and the older kids amused themselves by scaring the younger kids with ample speculation. The cumulative effect was to increase the “attractive nuisance” factor. Near the driveway apron, we’d often engage in a game of “dare you” to see who would be brave—or foolish—enough to walk up the driveway and risk being kidnapped and boiled alive by the witch posing as “Mrs. Rathbun.”
The thing of it was that even after a full-on round of “dare you” that led all the way inside the house and wholly harmless encounter with “the witch,” we still believed she and everything about her and the house and grounds was grandly haunted. After a week or so, we’d play the game all over again, as if previous knowledge had been expunged from our pathetic little memories. In truth, we wanted this patch of the neighborhood to remain haunted. And after all, everyone knew that our town, Anoka, Minnesota, was the Halloween Capital of the World.
Gaining access to the inner sanctum of the haunted house always followed the same sequence. The crowd of us would be loitering on or near the driveway apron. If we waited long enough, Mrs. Rathbun would be seen exiting the rear of the house to toss food scraps to the local wildlife. She’d hear or see us and wave—our signal that the spell was on. One or two kids would scramble, but the braver of the bunch would wave back and wait for the witch to approach us, a strong indication that if we didn’t run, we might not see our parents again.
The ancient woman, it turned out, was invariably kind and friendly. I interpreted her tattered, unwashed apparel as proof of extreme poverty, and because of this, I felt greatly sorry for her and a twinge of guilt—our family always had enough to eat and a range of clothes to wear, even though in my individual case, in the summer, anyway, I pretty much wore the same thing day in and day out until Mother finally noticed and pulled something different out of the closet.
As the first cats appeared, rubbing up against Mrs. Rathbun’s ancient nylons or our own bare legs, she would invite us to follow her up the driveway and around to the back entrance of the house. There our group courage would kick in, and we’d follow the old-fashioned woman in black into her dark haunted lair. (Cont.)
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
