“Are you using all that just for Gonzales' hair?” my husband asked.
“Oh, it’s only plonk”, I answered offhandedly, as I continued pouring the better half of a magnum bottle of red wine onto a brand new mop-head sitting in a large baking bowl. What I omitted to say was that I had already used twenty–odd teabags, a batch of organic coffee, plus a generous pinch of his specially imported turmeric and other precious spices - all sacrificed in the effort to get the right colour dye for Gonzales’ new hair.
No expense ought to be spared when one is doing the annual scarecrow spring makeover. Our Gonzales probably has the costliest and most time-consuming beauty regime of any espantapájaros in the entire region of Andalucía. Each year, our trustworthy allotment garden custodian goes through a complete physical makeover, adapting a brand new look (‘el look’) for the upcoming growing season. His style has to be classic enough to outlast the micro movements of mid-season fashion dips and peaks, because once he gets embedded in our plot, he is there for the duration and wont have a shave or change his outfit until early spring the following year. In other words, a scarecrow has to be built to last.
Other than the obvious, as what the name implies, what is a scarecrow anyhow? I believe these sweet and ghoulish figures somehow represent our universal need to recreate our likeness and to mark our territory. In all cultures and all epochs of history, figures shaped like humans or human-like deities, have been created out of stone, clay, precious metals, wood and even straw. These figures have varied in size, such as the enormous heads found on the Easter Islands, as well as the just over 10 cm tall figure of the voluptuous 30.000 years old Venus of Willendorf. Humans and other animal figures have been used to protect and guide us, as seen in North American totem poles. They were sacred figures placed towards the roaring sea, like the Inuksuk stone figures of the Inuit. Many were made to seek protection from the gods, such as the Greek god Priapus. In spite of being son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, Priapus was allegedly extremely ugly. In fact, he was so ugly that Greek farmers carved wooden scarecrow figures of him and placed them in their fields to protect their harvest and scare away birds and other undesirables. Since Egyptians and others used scarecrows even before the Greeks, Gonzales ancestry goes back at least 5000 years!
Now when it comes to the scary part, it gets real interesting. There are of course all the horror movies with a scarecrow villains, but scarecrows in the likeness of witches were believed to bring early spring in old Germany, presumably by scaring away the winters. Young boys and girls were dressed up as scarecrows in Medieval England, tasked with chasing away birds. Similar live scarecrow traditions were common amongst some Native Indians in North America. In some African cultures, farmers would net in their crops. The first birds caught inside the nets were killed and hung around the perimeters to scare away other birds, making them literally scare-crows. To further add to the international medley, the word ‘to scare’ comes from the Norse word skirra, meaning to frighten. You can always count on us Vikings to come up with those types of terms...
Here in Spain, espantapájaros (as in scarer of birds, not just crows) are less frequently seen. This could be because olives and grapes aren’t subjected to as many bird attacks as lets say a field of wheat. In our huerto or community garden, lizards are more frequent plunderers than birds, though they only affect the bug population. Since our town is located at about 800 meters above sea level, pretend-farmers like us have to grapple with a fairly extreme climate. Plants must be able to endure near 50 degree Centigrade summer heat, plus often no precipitation from May to December, as well as below freezing winters and floods and hailstorms in the spring. Only tough plants will thrive in such a climate, and equally tough guardians of said bounty.
We found Gonzales severely affected after this last winter. His handsome head was barely hanging on, attached by a single strand of skin and a couple of zap straps (bless those non-tear spice panty hoses…). Begging his forgiveness, I snipped off the remaining tendons and brought his head home, planning to deal with his bodily transformation later in situ. Like every year, I had to strip his cranium down to its individual parts, only keeping the sensory organs - eyes, nose and mouth, since he has never had any ears. His brain, which is always quite dense, didn’t need much new stuffing. It is amazing what industrial plastic wrapping can tolerate. I re-formed the head, leaving a hollow centre to allow a solid merging with his bone straight metal-rod spine. Come hell or high water, his head will not come off next winter!
There was no doubt that Gonzales needed a new ‘do’. His dried esparto grass wig had become a matted mass that even a Rastafarian scarecrow would have rejected. I bought a classic cotton thread mop-head, since the new microfiber ones won’t accept natural dye. I let it sit over night in the before-mentioned foul-smelling concoction, hoping to find a spectacular auburn wig the next morning. No such luck. It is ironic how an innocent spill of wine or coffee can leave permanent stains, yet when I deliberately tried to dye the mop with the same substances, it hardly had any effect. After rinsing it, what remained was a dirty mustardy coloured wig. Now, fake brash yellow hair is something that few of us wants to be associated with these days, but at least Gonzales will have the guts to admit that none of his hair is his own…
Once his head was covered in three layers of brand new granny-style skin-coloured nylon knee stockings, it was time to reshape and sew on his aristocratic nose. Due to my lack of needlework during the rest of the year, it got a bit of a north-eastern twist, but at least Gonzales can slide unnoticed onto any Alaskan Airline flight to Vegas, looking just like any of the other gamblers with a broken beaks. Next to be dealt with was Gonzales eyes. I tried different buttons, but felt that it would be unfaithful of me to change his old buttons and his deer-in-the- headlight stare. I decided to place the buttons close together to give him a slight myopia. This, combined with his Montreal designer eyeglass frames, gave him a new air of intellectual complexity. (Or perplexity, perhaps?)
When it was turn for his facial hair, I briefly considered then abandoned the idea of giving him sideburns. After last year’s bold-is-beautiful look, I wanted a younger style. I cut off his scruffy moustache, leaving a clean-shaven upper lip. To help disguise the fact that he doesn’t have much of a chin, I embroidered on a hipster style goatee. This new look was further augmented by a pair of bushy, un-tweezed eyebrows. After stitching on his yellow wig, I quickly and foolishly trimmed his bangs. It wasn’t a good look for Gonzales, and I couldn’t comfort him saying that it would grow out again soon, so I hid the unfortunate cut under a classic Andalucian straw hat. Then, to counterpoint his newfound masculinity, I gave him voluptuous pink lips. There was no question in my mind about one thing though - His signature look, his diastema, or his widely gapped discoloured front teeth had to stay.
Back at the huerto, it was time to clothe our scarecrow, which is always easier done when headless. I had managed to persuade my husband to donate one of his long sleeved gingham shirts. Though Timberland is not entirely Prêt a Porter, Gonzales 2018 style fits the part of our rural garden guardian. The new Gonzales is both outdoorsy and manly, vaguely resembling a music producer (I have too many film producer friends to compare him to them…). I doubt he scares away many birds and wouldn’t be surprised to find a nest in his straw hat next spring.
But lets be honest, Gonzales lives on our plot to bring a bit of fun and naughtiness between the tomato rows. His familiar face greets the hortelanos when we look up from our digging to stretch our aching backs. He is there for the hell of it, and because I once in my youth fell in love with a Hollywood silver screen legend. A favourite character in the techno-coloured Wizard of Oz has to be the clumsy, stuttering, lisping scarecrow. He remains close to our hearts, reminding us of our humanity.
How many of us haven’t on occasion lamented, “If I only had a brain…”
