“Don’t
change that channel and don’t look away! Tune in at ten-oh-one pee-em
Halloween night for a very special message from your friends at Family
Farms Soaps, only on Local 21!”
My ancient TV speakers belched that distorted audio blurb every night that October, over top of a crudely-animated dancing Jack-o-Lantern with arms and legs bent at wild angles. Whatever else was playing at the time, be it the evening news or "Dr. Creepenstein’s Saturday Night Creature Feature," would cut away precisely one minute after 10PM with a loud pop like the audio from an old-fashioned film reel. Then the mysterious advertisement blasted in ear-aching, low-fidelity sound, looped twice, and cut right back to the stubborn broadcast in progress with no indication of any intended interruption.
Guerilla marketing wasn’t unheard of even in the very early 90s. But what really kept every mom on the party line and every kid at the playground buzzing about Family Farms Soaps was the fact it didn’t seem to exist. When management at Local 21 posted a reward in the paper for anybody with information about the “pirate broadcast,” rumors exploded down every street about secret movie premiers and government conspiracies. Everybody had a theory of their very own about who had hijacked the television signal, and it’s not hard to understand why.
It was simply all our dying little town had left.
Ever since the factory closed, more and more citizens of Summerdown Grove had dropped their mortgages and ran without a word goodbye. Entire households disappeared overnight, with whole blocks soon succumbing to the pressure of an economy in sharp decline. The town’s population dropped by half within two years, and more left everyday. Only the handful of us without the money to search for a new job somewhere else were left behind, and we found the mystery of Family Farms Soaps a welcome distraction.
We all tuned in at night to catch the dancing pumpkin and his teasing announcement. Everybody compared notes the days after, just in case someone had caught a hint to unravel its meaning. His very special message dominated our imaginations even as friends and family fled the town one-by-one. Nothing swayed us from our television sets in the hours verging on midnight, both before and after the message just in case something about that day’s broadcast changed. Local 21 boasted more viewers than ever, and by the week leading up to the 31st they’d come to embrace the interloping signal.
A special segment ran every night from 9:45 to 10:15PM, hyping us up for the dancing pumpkin’s nightly appearance. They began to seat a live studio audience around a giant television screen in the newsroom just to film their reactions and broadcast them after the interruption. People elsewhere had begun to take notice too, as tourists of the weird began to pour into Summerdown Grove just to see the mysterious pumpkin in action. They brought their wallets with them, and for a very brief time a glimmer of hope returned to the locals. Some even began to whisper that the entire spectacle was just a ploy to draw in a new industry of lookyloos and armchair detectives interested in a safe mystery to explore in the backwoods of their own home state. Everyone was absolutely enthralled by the mystery of Family Farms Soaps, and many folks arranged massive viewing parties just to watch the ten or fifteen seconds it played across the TV.
Then, at 10:01PM on October 31st… The dancing pumpkin didn’t show.
The Local 21 Family Farms Soaps Reveal Special saw several dozen people seated together in a conference room, broadcast live from their studio as they all waited for the big surprise to drop. The camera held steady on them as they turned and watched their own live feed on a giant screen, all present practically vibrating with anticipation. When the screen still showed the backs of their heads at 10:02, some gazed at their watches in confusion, as though perhaps each was running slow. By 10:03, several folks had started to pace around the room, pulling at their hair and cursing. By 10:04, the feed had switched back to Mel in the newsroom to salvage the situation with speculation.
But the dream was over. Our last hope at cultural relevance had failed us.
Or had it?
The next day, a basket appeared on the doorstep of each local home still occupied after the mass exodus of Summerdown Grove. Each basket contained an array of handsome, creamy white soaps carved by hand into the shapes of tiny men and women with startling detail. Several bore recognizable effigies of people we all knew, long-lost friends who’d presumably packed up and moved away after everything went to hell.
Attached to each basket was a small card bearing a familiar dancing Jack-O-Lantern. A message had been typed inside each card, addressed to the head of the recipient's household.
Mine read:
“Dear LivingHalloween,
Please enjoy this basket of complimentary soaps made with love and just a bit of hometown flavor! Worry not for your departed friends and neighbors, for a little bit of them will always remain in our fair city.
Fun fact: Did you know soap was traditionally crafted from animal fats?
Thanks again from your friends at Family Farms Soaps!”
And that was it.
That was the last anybody ever heard of that otherwise imaginary company. The police made the rounds later that week and gathered up every basket of soap they could find without a public explanation, though the deputy who came to collect mine was an old friend from school. He let me in on one last big secret before warning me he’d know who blabbed if the evening news found out.
He told me a retired cop had been camping with his dog several miles outside town, deep enough in the woods he’d brought a can of bear mace and a rifle for protection. Two days after Halloween, he’d ran across a deserted shack with a gas-powered generator. Inside was a large wood stove covered in scummy pots and perfumed bricks of uncut soap.
A wheelbarrow caked in ash sat outside, and just a few yards away lay a large fire pit filled with about twelve feet of cracked and charred human bones.
You won’t hear about this in the news, and you won’t find it in a search on the Internet. The police kept a tight lid on the story, even though it might have saved our town from obscurity. They never announced a suspect, and I imagine they felt the influx of visitors a fresh mystery could bring would only dangle more potential victims within reach of a monster.
Fun fact: Many soaps are still made from animal fat. This likely includes the one on your bathroom sink. Family Farms Soaps were made of fat, too, but not from cows or pigs.
But Family Farms Soaps were made with a little bit of hometown flavor in each bar.
My ancient TV speakers belched that distorted audio blurb every night that October, over top of a crudely-animated dancing Jack-o-Lantern with arms and legs bent at wild angles. Whatever else was playing at the time, be it the evening news or "Dr. Creepenstein’s Saturday Night Creature Feature," would cut away precisely one minute after 10PM with a loud pop like the audio from an old-fashioned film reel. Then the mysterious advertisement blasted in ear-aching, low-fidelity sound, looped twice, and cut right back to the stubborn broadcast in progress with no indication of any intended interruption.
Guerilla marketing wasn’t unheard of even in the very early 90s. But what really kept every mom on the party line and every kid at the playground buzzing about Family Farms Soaps was the fact it didn’t seem to exist. When management at Local 21 posted a reward in the paper for anybody with information about the “pirate broadcast,” rumors exploded down every street about secret movie premiers and government conspiracies. Everybody had a theory of their very own about who had hijacked the television signal, and it’s not hard to understand why.
It was simply all our dying little town had left.
Ever since the factory closed, more and more citizens of Summerdown Grove had dropped their mortgages and ran without a word goodbye. Entire households disappeared overnight, with whole blocks soon succumbing to the pressure of an economy in sharp decline. The town’s population dropped by half within two years, and more left everyday. Only the handful of us without the money to search for a new job somewhere else were left behind, and we found the mystery of Family Farms Soaps a welcome distraction.
We all tuned in at night to catch the dancing pumpkin and his teasing announcement. Everybody compared notes the days after, just in case someone had caught a hint to unravel its meaning. His very special message dominated our imaginations even as friends and family fled the town one-by-one. Nothing swayed us from our television sets in the hours verging on midnight, both before and after the message just in case something about that day’s broadcast changed. Local 21 boasted more viewers than ever, and by the week leading up to the 31st they’d come to embrace the interloping signal.
A special segment ran every night from 9:45 to 10:15PM, hyping us up for the dancing pumpkin’s nightly appearance. They began to seat a live studio audience around a giant television screen in the newsroom just to film their reactions and broadcast them after the interruption. People elsewhere had begun to take notice too, as tourists of the weird began to pour into Summerdown Grove just to see the mysterious pumpkin in action. They brought their wallets with them, and for a very brief time a glimmer of hope returned to the locals. Some even began to whisper that the entire spectacle was just a ploy to draw in a new industry of lookyloos and armchair detectives interested in a safe mystery to explore in the backwoods of their own home state. Everyone was absolutely enthralled by the mystery of Family Farms Soaps, and many folks arranged massive viewing parties just to watch the ten or fifteen seconds it played across the TV.
Then, at 10:01PM on October 31st… The dancing pumpkin didn’t show.
The Local 21 Family Farms Soaps Reveal Special saw several dozen people seated together in a conference room, broadcast live from their studio as they all waited for the big surprise to drop. The camera held steady on them as they turned and watched their own live feed on a giant screen, all present practically vibrating with anticipation. When the screen still showed the backs of their heads at 10:02, some gazed at their watches in confusion, as though perhaps each was running slow. By 10:03, several folks had started to pace around the room, pulling at their hair and cursing. By 10:04, the feed had switched back to Mel in the newsroom to salvage the situation with speculation.
But the dream was over. Our last hope at cultural relevance had failed us.
Or had it?
The next day, a basket appeared on the doorstep of each local home still occupied after the mass exodus of Summerdown Grove. Each basket contained an array of handsome, creamy white soaps carved by hand into the shapes of tiny men and women with startling detail. Several bore recognizable effigies of people we all knew, long-lost friends who’d presumably packed up and moved away after everything went to hell.
Attached to each basket was a small card bearing a familiar dancing Jack-O-Lantern. A message had been typed inside each card, addressed to the head of the recipient's household.
Mine read:
“Dear LivingHalloween,
Please enjoy this basket of complimentary soaps made with love and just a bit of hometown flavor! Worry not for your departed friends and neighbors, for a little bit of them will always remain in our fair city.
Fun fact: Did you know soap was traditionally crafted from animal fats?
Thanks again from your friends at Family Farms Soaps!”
And that was it.
That was the last anybody ever heard of that otherwise imaginary company. The police made the rounds later that week and gathered up every basket of soap they could find without a public explanation, though the deputy who came to collect mine was an old friend from school. He let me in on one last big secret before warning me he’d know who blabbed if the evening news found out.
He told me a retired cop had been camping with his dog several miles outside town, deep enough in the woods he’d brought a can of bear mace and a rifle for protection. Two days after Halloween, he’d ran across a deserted shack with a gas-powered generator. Inside was a large wood stove covered in scummy pots and perfumed bricks of uncut soap.
A wheelbarrow caked in ash sat outside, and just a few yards away lay a large fire pit filled with about twelve feet of cracked and charred human bones.
You won’t hear about this in the news, and you won’t find it in a search on the Internet. The police kept a tight lid on the story, even though it might have saved our town from obscurity. They never announced a suspect, and I imagine they felt the influx of visitors a fresh mystery could bring would only dangle more potential victims within reach of a monster.
Fun fact: Many soaps are still made from animal fat. This likely includes the one on your bathroom sink. Family Farms Soaps were made of fat, too, but not from cows or pigs.
But Family Farms Soaps were made with a little bit of hometown flavor in each bar.
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