Stu's email address is stumail@earthlink.net.

Since Labor Day weekend I have inherited more ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, salad dressing, steak sauce, taco sauce, pancake syrup--well you get the idea--than I could use in three lifetimes.

It seems that summer workers figure it will either spoil by the time they get to where they are returning home or they just don't want to be bothered with it. Whatever the case, I have become the self-proclaimed, unofficial king o' condiments of Mackinac. I'm thinking about having a condiments dinner party. What do you suppose a soup made of ketchup, taco sauce and chicken broth would taste like? Mmmm good! You could do shots of Tabasco sauce with Log Cabin chasers. Wow! As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

Move over Katie Brown and Martha Stewart. This is the time of year where if you are still on Mackinac you can actually find time to visit with friends, have dinner parties and do all those fun little things you've dreamed about all summer. Such as go to the mainland, have some sort of food not widely found on the Island (Asian, Greek, Indian...) go to Walmart and see a movie. I recently went to Cheboygen and had Chinese food and saw a movie. I had just about forgotten how good Chinese food tasted. It's a good thing we didn't see a Chinese movie because an hour later I'd just be wanting to see it again. I know, you saw that coming down Lakeshore Drive, but I couldn't resist the old Chinese food joke. It's amazing how living on the Island for months can make one get excited about what to people living elsewhere would be mundane things.

For instance, I go in a mini-mart in Cheybogen and they have dozens of snack foods to chose from! I'm practically pulling people in off the street, "Hey look, salt and vinegar potato chips!" For a moment I envision nearly getting arrested, but once I explain to the Trooper that I live on Mackinac, he gives his partner that knowing look and lets me go. Summer has hung on just about as long as it could before its fingers weakened and had to let go of the ledge. The leaves are now turning and the cold nights are upon us. But the weekends still provide hoards of curious tourists taking advantage of off-season rates and discount sales. "Look mom, 20% off, now it only costs $30 more than what I would pay at home!" Weekdays are different, though, you could shoot a cannon down the street, but then you would be arrested and that would really put a damper on your vacation. Little by little, the Island is preparing for winter.

Most of the summer workers and cottagers are gone now, the pipes are being drained and the shutters hung up. The rhythm of the Island, which is dictated by the ferries, has lowered to a slower tempo now that the schedules have been reduced to hourly arrivals and departures. Soon, the Island will be turned back over to the year-around inhabitants of the Great Turtle. Snow machines will replace bikes, ice will replace open water and snow will replace horse manure. The big topic, however, on the minds of those of us remaining (besides powder post beetles and the "Somewhere in Time" weekend) is the annual Halloween party at Horn's Gaslight Bar. I've never been a big fan of Halloween; too much pressure to come up with a good costume.

Let's face it, coming up with a good costume is tough. You don't want to be too basic, because then you just look stupid. You don't want to be too clever or abstract because then you just have to explain your costume to everyone knucklehead you see. The perfect costume is trendy with a timeless flair and funny with just a dash of scary. All this without being perverted or appealing to the prurient interests. What this year's in costume will be is anybody's guess. I want to go, but I don't know what to be. Maybe I'll just glue condiment bottles all over me and imbed in my back a fake axe and go as the inside of my refrigerator. Then people would say, "Hey Stu! Say, what are you supposed to be anyway? Man, that costume is really bad!" It's been a good summer Mackinac.

To you I raise my tankard of Old El Paso taco sauce and say "Happy Halloween!"