“It’s going to be wicked,” Max coaxed. “Nobody has lived in Grandpa Black’s place for 30 years!”
“Well, my dad did call her a witch,” Amy conceded. “And nobody has had a decent ‘haunted house’ in town forever.”
Ms. Green extended an open house invitation to everyone in Chaucerville on Halloween night, guaranteeing a fright if they stepped inside the century-old farmhouse. She had returned to the community of her birth after moving away at age eight. Few remembered the Green family when she moved back nearly a year ago. Located on the edge of forested foothills, the town of about 10,000 saw a constant flux in its population. Mining, lumber, oil fields, farming, ranching and a railroad mainline powered the economy.
Remembering how residents there had always valued their resources, Green put Chaucerville in her sights for environmental innovation. A decade of research had yielded a breakthrough for the still young chemical engineer. She thought her former hometown would jump at the opportunity. Instead, the city council voted 6-1 to reject permits and funding for a plant that would actively bring hundreds of tons of “trash” into town.
Green hoped she could persuade the council despite the community’s track record: a full landfill with garbage trucked two hours away, closure of the city-operated recycling center five years ago and a Keep America Beautiful affiliate that folded last July. Bottles and cans blew down main street.
Still interested in changing the area’s perception of their environmental responsibility, Green bought a 500-acre farm outside of town. The county proved more friendly to her venture: using microbes to create a gasoline additive from Nos. 1-7 plastic. Combined with ethanol in a 1:5 ratio the substance cuts emissions by 90 percent while drastically increasing mileage.
As a second-grader, Green had loved trick-or-treating one last time in Chaucerville. However, really scary issues gradually eclipsed her love of ghost stories and everything creepy. Accounts of the hole in the ozone layer, oil spills and global warming were never questioned. She wanted children to believe they could change the final chapters of Earth’s ultimate haunting tale. . . .
An orange harvest moon rose behind the expansive farm house as the first cars drove up. Candles flickered in jack-o-lanterns of every size, shape and color on the front lawn. Green greeted guests in a flowing emerald robe holding a solar-powered lamp. She led a few parents and many more children through the house, noting electricity would be spotty in the future as global warming strained the power grid.
Going out the back door the tour heard what sounded like ailing animals. Expertly crafted from reused recyclable materials, the “aquatic birds and mammals” struggled in an “oil spill.” One boy stuck his finger in the goo and smirked at the taste of chocolate syrup. Next a blaze recalled the destruction of a forest fire though on closer inspection the metal forest was not consumed. Inside a large shop building, Green stopped the group at the overhead door. She summoned a severe thunderstorm at the touch of a button. Giant fans created gale-force winds while a sprinkler system and industrial ice machine brought pouring rain and deadly hail. The stones pummeled a parked beater car.
Visitors reacted in awe to situations they likely had only seen second-hand. While she had a captive audience, Green concluded the night with hot cider, cookies and spine-tingling stories around a campfire. She hoped a seed had been planted in more than one young mind as she related real tales of pollution, habitat loss and deforestation, to name a few. In every instance, Green countered the shock with a sense of awe about what millions of people are doing every day to prevent and reverse damage to the environment in their communities and around the globe.