HALLOWEEN VALVES AND TRICK OR TREAT TUBES
Posted by STEVE M on
Love it or loathe it, Halloween is upon us once again. Why are supermarket shelves groaning under the mass of pumpkins ?
Well, we all blame the Americans but that is only partly true as in times of yore it was an Irish custom on All Hallows Eve to carve a turnip into Jack-o'-lantern because a potato was too small and squidgy. This was done, all because of a fokelore tale that went something like this:-
Stingy Jack,a lazy but wily blacksmith tricked Satan into climbing an apple tree, then trapped him by carving crosses around the trunk which Satan could not cross (sic) to get down.
After more bargaining than you experience at a radio rally stall, Jack lets Satan go only after he agrees to never take his soul. Many years later when Jack died, his life had been too sinful for him to go to Heaven; however, Satan had promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from Hell as well.
With nowhere to go, Jack wailingly asked how he would see where to go as it was dark in the wilderness so, Satan mockingly tossed him an R type bright emitter valve to light his way. Jack wailed even more and Satan told him if he didn't shut up he'd be given a DAF91 instead ( dinky and pitifully dark with its shrouded 1.4V heater filament) so Jack buttoned it, carved out one of his turnips (which were his favorite food), put the R type valve inside it and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place becoming known as "Jack of the Lantern", or jack o'lantern.
And so it continued..... until Joe Biden's family went to the States where there was a dearth of turnips but a surfeit of pumpkins so the custom continues to this day with only a vegetable substitution...........