In my hometown, Leland, a tiny Mississippi Delta farming community, everybody knows everybody … except on Halloween, when kids, disguised in the get-up of ghosts, gangsters, goons, goblins and ghouls, roam the streets and terrorize the residents, who offer treats to avoid tricks. One moonless Halloween Saturday night, my friend Clarence and a pal, both ten years old, having successfully pillaged the neighborhoods, headed toward Leland’s main street to extort goodies from storekeepers and shoppers.
To get there, they had to walk across an unlit, rickety old footbridge traversing Deer Creek, the banks of which are lined with gloomy, moss-covered cypress trees overhanging thick patches of lily pads. According to local yore, the eerie apparitions of those who drowned in the miasmic, phantasmagoric slough or were devoured by its resident alligators arise from their watery crypts on Halloween night to bemoan their dreadful deaths.
As they approached the bridge, Clarence and his accomplice were not the least bit afraid. Decked out at as notorious gangsters John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly, they were armed with daggers, pistols, and lever-action, long-range, Red Ryder BB rifles.
As they stepped on to the footbridge, they failed to notice several bigger teenage boys in Casper the Ghost sheets, hiding in bushes beside the bridge, awaiting a signal from their similarly disguised partners hidden in bushes on the other side. When the gangsters were halfway across, the ghosts charged from both directions, shrieking and gesticulating, with their blood-spattered sheets flapping.
With his trusty rifle loaded and ready, my intrepid friend shouted to his partner, “You mow down those thugs charging from behind, and I’ll slaughter these big brutes attacking from the front!”
The half-pint hoodlums kneeled and took aim. To the bigger boys’ painful dismay, they quickly discovered that their sheets provided no protection against the stinging salvos, and after being hit by a fusillade of well-placed BBs, forgot all about the loot they intended to steal from the smaller boys, and fled in panic.
The would-be assailants attacking from the rear disappeared, while the others fled toward the safety of Leland’s main street, with Dillinger and Kelly in hot pursuit, rapidly levering their weapons, aiming with the accuracy of seasoned marksmen, and inflicting murderous wounds on their intimidators’ derrières, who discarded their sheets and were running for their lives.
The gangsters’ bloodlust reached a feverish pitch, and in hot pursuit they fired relentlessly, as the terrified teenagers ran down the full length of the main drag, screaming and pleading for help from those witnessing their imminent demise. The chase led them past Billy Clyde Chatterley’s Corner Café, a favorite hangout of local farmers, who gathered there on weekends to lounge out front, play dominos, and talk about the crops.
Finally, the targeted teenagers outran their assailants, but the diminutive John Dillinger and mini Machine Gun Kelly were the talk of the town for a long time, and farmers who witnessed the spectacle still refer to them as: Those Rowdy, Rough, Ready Red Ryder Riflemen.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
In my hometown, Leland, a tiny Mississippi Delta farming community, everybody knows everybody … except on Halloween, when kids, disguised in the get-up of ghosts, gangsters, goons, goblins and ghouls, roam the streets and terrorize the residents, who offer treats to avoid tricks. One moonless Halloween Saturday night, my friend Clarence and a pal, both ten years old, having successfully pillaged the neighborhoods, headed toward Leland’s main street to extort goodies from storekeepers and shoppers.
To get there, they had to walk across an unlit, rickety old footbridge traversing Deer Creek, the banks of which are lined with gloomy, moss-covered cypress trees overhanging thick patches of lily pads. According to local yore, the eerie apparitions of those who drowned in the miasmic, phantasmagoric slough or were devoured by its resident alligators arise from their watery crypts on Halloween night to bemoan their dreadful deaths.
As they approached the bridge, Clarence and his accomplice were not the least bit afraid. Decked out at as notorious gangsters John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly, they were armed with daggers, pistols, and lever-action, long-range, Red Ryder BB rifles. 
