The Haunted Hayride

As I mentioned in my last post, I worked at a haunted hayride with some friends during the fall after I graduated high school, and the one after that. That whole period of my life between the end of high school and the start of my career was an interesting time, kind of an adventure, kind of some lost wandering, directionless, but free from those long school days I'd known for most of my life.

My friend Ed had heard about it. It was the Sleepy Hollow Haunted Hayride, and is still around and has a website, which you can visit here. On the nights we'd want to work, we'd just show up, and be given our assignments. It was usually me, Ed, our friend Brian, and Brian's girlfriend at the time, Liz. And by work, what I mean is "act" -- we'd be actors in whichever scene of the hayride we were assigned to. We could be zombies, werewolves, vampires, you name it. It was almost always a social activity as well: for example, if you were a zombie, you were part of a group of zombies, in a field, with the other actors. Makeup was almost always part of the deal as well. I think the strangest thing I ever did there was to be Hannibal Lecter, in a cage, and the tractor pulling the cart would just drive past me, standing in a cage, wearing that facemask, looking at the passengers. Not scary at all, IMHO. And very solitary, definitely the least fun thing I ever did there. When working as a single actor (I should put that in quotes -- "actor") in a scene, you'd often find yourself running down to the previous scene to hang out with whoever was there, only to run back to your spot once you saw the tractor headlights approaching in the distance.

The other people there were a lot of fun. Most of them were still in high school, whereas I'd just graduated, and Ed and Brian had graduated a year or two before me. High school wasn't exactly yesterday, and I wish I could remember their names, because they were a bunch of regulars, the same people were there all the time. One night I worked with a guy who was a few years older than us, and we were sitting out in the cold in this one sort of isolated spot, just freezing there, and he joked that we were "Sleepy Hollow's Homeless". I remember him going on as if he was someone talking about our roles that night, saying something like "Sleepy Hollow's Homeless. That was terrifying. I heard about that from Bob in accounting class." On an earlier occasion, this same guy would just walk up to the hay cart from out of the cornfield and tell the passengers "If you build it, they will come" as a reference to the movie "Field of Dreams".

At the end of the night, after about 4 hours, it would all finish up, and we'd return to the main area to get our pay. They'd also serve us hot chocolate and food, around a bonfire, which was nice. On the really busy nights, they'd give us double the money, which was generous of them, and very appreciated.

Another funny thing that happened once, that I wasn't there for, but that Ed told me about, was one night the actor Tom Wopat, who had been on the TV show "The Dukes of Hazzard" many years before, had been there, performing with his band. Ed had worked that night with his friend Chris. At the end of the night, when the pay and food were being handed out, Chris cut ahead of Tom Wopat and grabbed the last muffin being served. According to Ed, he then asked Chris "Do you know who that was?" (referring to Wopat), to which Chris replied "Yeah, and I just took his muffin."

This whole blog post could probably be filed under "You had to be there", but they're some fond memories for me. And another reason I love this time of year.