Practical Decisions
Most of the people still alive in Elysburg who were present in the Ralpho Township Community Park on that breezy afternoon in May 1952 donโt remember the dessert table. Memory, like the cheap elastic in hotel room shower caps, gives out all too soon. Those who do remember donโt think about it much. Why would they? Frank Marsh had not yet been hired as the pastor of the Presbyterian Church, the unfortunate Tom Collins incident was still a few years away, and the First Annual Elysburg Community Potluck didnโt involve a tornado, a tragedy, or a visiting president.
Even Margaret Harrigan doesnโt think about it.
Margaret Harrigan, nรฉe Dorr, is one hundred and one years old now, and she has better things to think about. For example: Zinia, her second great-granddaughter, born earlier this year, who is pink, loud, and, as yet, unconvinced that the universe exists for anyone but her. This is, of course, a reasonable belief.
Still, May 17th, 1952, was a special day. There were five Saturdays that May, which already felt like the universe showing off. But the 17th was both Margaretโs twenty-eighth birthday and the spring potluck. These two facts had nothing to do with each other except that Margaret needed them to.
An aside: naming your event โannualโ anythingโespecially in the first yearโis a sure way to scare it off, like talking about marriage on a first date. In subsequent years, the potluck made a few more tries before being folded into Memorial Day, which by that point had shed its solemnity and reinvented itself as a catchall holiday for lawn darts, potato salad, and agreeable forgetfulness.
Back to 1952: Four years earlier, Bill EicherโMargaretโs fiancรฉ, her plan, her futureโhad written from Japan to say he would not be coming back. With his time on active duty ending, Bill had decided he wanted to see more of the world. He thought he could best do that alone. He may have been a bit tipsy when he bought the ticket to Manila and then on to Adelaide, but Bill was still very young and very sincere, and this, undoubtedly, is the most dangerous combination there is.
Up to that point, Margaret had her life laid out neatly, like folded laundry. Bill picked it up, shook it once, and left. What followed for Margaret were several years that should have been joyful and werenโt. She was saved, more or less, by her friend Betty, by the church ladies who had already learned the hard way that life does not keep promises, and by time, which eventually dulls even the sharpest of darts.
As her birthday approached, Margaret decided she would not be alone forever. This was not a dramatic decision. It was practical, like deciding to replace a worn shoe. The village potluck, she had determined, would be a turning point in her life. This was optimistic, but optimism is how humans build pyramids with little more than ropes and sweat, land a tiny metal capsule on a rock 238,900 miles in space, or move furniture that is much too heavy for them.
At that time in her life, Margaret was practical if nothing else, and she needed something to bring to the potluck. She chose a dessert.
Desserts are unnecessary and therefore hopeful. They also donโt need to arrive on time. This latter fact may or may not have played into Margaretโs decision-making. Most of all, she wanted something that a person would associate with pleasure rather than sadness.
She remembered a recipe sheโd come across a few years earlier: Rice Krispies marshmallow treats. Simple. Cheerful. Slightly ridiculous. Perfect. She made three batches.
This was the original recipe from before everything got larger and sweeter and more apologetic:
- A quarter cup of butter.
- Half a pound of marshmallows.
- Five cups of Rice Krispies.
- Vanilla, if you were feeling fancy. (Margaret was, in fact, feeling fancy.)
You melted. You stirred. You pressed. You cut into squares. That was it. No mysticism. No secrets. Just transformation through pressure and patience, which is most of life, really.
Three batches was overly ambitious. The treats were eaten eventually, mostly by Margaret herself, as, like at most potlucks, there were far too many desserts and not enough eligible men to eat them. Margaret did not marry anyone she met that day. The universe did not noticeably shift. But something small and important happened anyway. Margaret kept going.
She lived. She loved again, differently. She had children, and grandchildren, and now Zinia, who will never know Bill or Japan or the particular courage it took in 1952 to bring a dessert to a park and hope it matters.
In at least one small way, it did matter. It mattered to me.
I was there that day. Not because I knew Margaret, or Elysburg, or anything at all about that particular patch of central Pennsylvania. I was there because I happened to be there. One of the 22,888 days I had experienced since a disagreeable night in Montmartre in 1889, when I was accosted by a creature of darkness and left for dead. These things happen sometimes if you stay out late enough, but thatโs a story for another time.
I found the party by accident after spending much of the day at Knoebels Amusement Park, which, admittedly, is a curious place for a vampire to loiter, but I have always had an interest in American optimism, especially when it is bolted to questionable machinery. I was on a quest of sortsโnot just for sustenance, though that was pressingโbut for something harder to name. I had left Paris six months earlier, fled it really, and after lingering in New York, decided to drive west, a few years before Jack Kerouac made wandering sound like a civic duty.
I must have looked odd. Wide-brimmed hat. Collar up. Skirting the sun as if it had personally offended me. People noticed. People always do. But if Margaret did, she didnโt let on.
She approached me the way she approached everyone else, holding a platter piled high with sticky, shining squares, and offered me oneโor as many as I liked. No judgement. No fear. Just generosity, handed out like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I declined, as many others did, but for reasons that, if spoken, would have spoiled the afternoon. We talked briefly, just niceties, as heartbreak doesnโt mix well with marshmallows.
Still, I left with more than I had arrived. Her cheerfulness, so carefully practiced. Her kindness, freely given. And behind it all, the unmistakable sadness in her eyesโa sadness that had not made her smaller, only deeper. It stayed with me. It still does.
Some moments donโt change history. They just keep a few of us going. And though I still sustain myself on the blood of the livingโeach of us has demons to manageโI try to do so with restraint, and with an eye toward the universe at large, which is having a hard enough time already. I take no more than I must. I leave people breathing, mostly hopeful, and sometimes even better than before.
This is not sainthood. It is maintenance. And on my better days, it feels like enough.
released February 13, 2026
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Brutalist neo-Soviet insomnia rock from Chicago’s sharpest knife.
Play on repeat.
CAST & CREW
- Elektrikรกล the Electrician
- Zรกhada the Enigma
- Nadลกenec the Enthusiast
- Geolog the Geologist
- Odbornรญk the Professional
- Profesor the Professor
Expertly performed, recorded, and mixed by Anomaly Report at Fragile Artifice Studio, Santa Fe, NM, and Mission Control, Stevenโs Point, WI.
Audio from โThe Vampire Batโ (1933), Majestic Pictures, made available under Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal from archive.org. Additional media assets provided under license by Pond5. Cover photo by carcdann, @belarus
Collars up, in their wide-brimmed hats, Anomaly Report lingers in the shadows, skirting the gutter at Skipp’s.
No marshmallows were harmed during the making of this EP.