Would you believe that Halloween is an Irish celebration honoring Jack O’Lantern? The Irish have been trying to keep it a secret, considering the forces against such a revelation... the Coalition of Halloween Witches, and the League of Warlocks, to say nothing of the United Grisly Ghouls (UGG!) and the Underground Society for Ghosties’ and Beasties! But truth must out, and where a better place for it to out than in the Marketplace (even if it is stolen from Spindrift Magazine).

A long time ago, in that far-away wee country called Ireland, there lived a young man by the name of Jack O’Lantern. A personable lad he was, with bright red hair and laughing eyes, and it was said of him that he loved and was loved even by the Wee People, who don’t take to likin’ people much let alone loving them!

Jack O’Lantern went about doing good, and making people laugh and generally endearing himself to everyone, and then he fell in love with the daughter of the Black Lord of Galway.

When the Black Lord heard of it, he whisked his daughter away, and sent a friend of his, a black-hatted witch with a face that would curdle the milk, to meet Jack at their “trysting” place. You can imagine dear Jack’s reaction to this sordid apparition who swooped in on a broom. He cut her broomstick up into short lengths and chased her across a field where she disappeared under a wall!

As he sat with his head in his hands, weeping for his lost love, Jack was quietly surrounded by a troop of his friends, the Wee People, who extracted from him the whole sordid story.

Until one has experienced the ingenious methods of the Leprechauns, one scarce believes what can happen. With a singleness of purpose, they surrounded the castle of the Black Lord, went inside and let the maiden down from a tower window in a basket of ferns and blackberry vines. The two were married by the priest and took off on a honeymoon to one of the Aran Islands.

But the Wee People weren’t through with his Lordship. Oh no! Known for their highly developed sense of humor, the leprechauns went to the field and gathered golden pumpkins, which they hollowed out and carved smiling faces on each. Inside each pumpkin they placed a candle.

On All Hallows Eve, when the Black Lord had invited all the denizens of the underworld to his castle for their annual frolic, and the air was rent with the ghostly wails and the screeches of the witches, and country folk huddled indoors with the windows locked... and lo!

Every window in the castle was suddenly lighted with a laughing face, an orange pumpkin with a wide smile!

The Black Lord, arriving at his castle after dark with his coven of witches, was greeted by the smiling orange faces in every window, had a heart attack. The country folk, hearing the commotion, came from their cottages and saw the Lord dead and the castle with its lighted windows, and they set up a great celebration and danced all night on the village green.

And from that day on, when All Hallows Eve approaches, people gather pumpkins and carve them into Jack O’Lanterns, in honor of their friend, and to this day the happy lighted orange lanterns dispel the spells of witches, ghouls and ghosties, to say nothing of the beasties!

Wherever there is a need, you can be sure there will be some bright entrepreneur who will find a way to fill it. Back in the year 1872, in the industrial area of Providence, Rhode Island, it was past eight in the evening and hungry workers were heading home. The problem was that every restaurant in town closed its doors at that hour, leaving late-shift factory workers and other night owls without a place to eat.

So, an enterprising peddler named Walter Scott came to the rescue. Scott outfitted a horse-drawn wagon with a stove and trundled through the factory district late at night selling sandwiches, boiled eggs, pies and coffee. “Walter Scott’s Pioneer Lunch,” as he called it, was met with great enthusiasm. Soon other entrepreneurs began operating after-hours lunch wagons all over town.

Nearly a decade later, a worker named Sam Jones was walking home from a lodge meeting one dreary, rainy night and decided to stop by a lunch wagon for a snack. As he was standing in the drizzling rain eating his sandwich, he was struck with an idea... Why make people stand out in the bad weather to eat? Why not build a lunch wagon big enough to accommodate people on the inside?

Jones saved his money, and by 1887 he had the $800 he needed to build a custom walk-in lunch wagon complete with kitchen, counters, and four to five stools for customers. Soon walk-in lunch wagons caught on all over the Northeast.

By 1912, nearly 50 of the “floating restaurants” were roaming the streets of New England. But many of the wagons were becoming eyesores, with peeling paint and loose seams. Citizens complained, and city ordinances forced the wagons off the street and out of sight by 10:00am.

Not easily thwarted, owners came up with a way around the rules. They picked a good site, off the main road, where they could set up their lunch carts permanently. Now they were officially “street cafes,” and they could operate night and day.

And so the 24-hour diner was born, but they never seemed to make it this far west although there are plenty still on the East Coast. We have saloons and cafes here, plenty of drive-ins and espresso stands, and a few delis, but I don’t ever remember a diner here in Oak Harbor. At least not since the early 1960s.

Several decades later one of the most interesting things to come out of the diner era is the language that waitresses used when placing an order with the cook. Everyone who worked in the diner had to know “the lingo.” Here are a few examples of what you may have heard a waitress shout when placing a customer’s order:

Frog sticks! (french fries)
Nervous pudding! (jello)
Splash of red noise! (tomato soup)
Mud! (chocolate ice cream)
Radio sandwich! (tuna)
Houseboat! (banana split)
City juice! (glass of water)
Baby! (glass of milk)
Hold the hail! (no ice)
Sinkers and suds! (donuts and coffee)
Squeeze one! (orange juice)
Bossy in a bowl (beef stew)
Wrecked hen fruit! (scrambled egg)
Pair of drawers! (coffee)
On wheels! (to go)
Burn the British! (toasted English muffin)

And then there is that famous remark made by an irate waiter to an irate customer... Shoulda Had It Toasted!

Lee Brainard moved to Whidbey as a Navy wife in 1961 and worked for the local paper. She moved onto the base in 1970 where she spent the next 15 years as editor and reporter for the Navy Crosswind. During that time she started working for Dorothy Neil, editing and publishing nine of Dorothy books and editing Spindrift Magazine. In 1990 she and her husband published the Town Crier, an Oak Harbor community newspaper. She is also an active member of the Oak Harbor Soroptimist club.