It was a spooky weekend here in the Tinicum swamp, but not because of Halloween tricks or seasonal changes.

“So why was it spooky?” Swamp Rabbit said.

I told him I’d watched a movie called Strait-Jacket, with Joan Crawford as an ax murderer who, after 20 years in an asylum, comes home and creates more mayhem. The next morning I got into my car to drive to a job upstate, but my path was blocked by a boxy blue Amazon delivery truck driven by a woman who looked exactly like crazy Joan.

She got out and banged on the doors of three different shacks. No one answered, but she left parcels at each shack. I shouted for her to please park on the side of the road, I was late for work and had to get by. She furrowed her thick Joan Crawford eyebrows and stared daggers (axes?) at me before driving off.

She crossed Passyunk Creek to the tony side of the swamp, where the road is wider and the shacks much bigger. I tried to pass her, but it was tough going. Delivery vehicles were double-parked on both sides of the road — Amazon, FedEx, UPS.

“It’s eerie,” I told Swamp Rabbit. “People don’t go out to shop anymore. They’re home, but they don’t even answer the door when their deliveries arrive.”

Joan put the brakes on near a shack with an American flag hanging out front. Except the flag wasn’t red, white and blue; it was black and white with one blue stripe in the middle symbolizing (from what I’ve read) the flag owner’s support for the police (the “thin blue line”). I steered around Joan’s van as she left a package containing God-knows-what on the steps near the flag.

“Everything seems strange, even the flag,” I complained. “Amazon is everywhere. People are hiding from Covid-19 and climate change.”

And that’s not all that’s strange. A bunch of QAnon followers went to Dealey Plaza in Dallas last week to see the late JFK Jr. appear there and announce his solidarity with Donald Trump. A U.S. Senate Democrat is blocking clean energy. A closet Trumper was just elected governor of Virginia by people who would rather erase history thsn let their kids learn about slavery in school (though Matt Taibbi thinks there’s more to it than that).

Swamp Rabbit shrugged. “Signs and wonders, but what can we do about all this stuff?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna steer clear of Joan Crawford,” I said. “I think she keeps an ax in that truck.”

Footnote: You can order a black-and-white cop flag from Amazon, of course.