BLOG: Early Morning Musings, I Miss Halloween

I do not come from creative people. When I was a boy what we lacked in creativity was matched by a corresponding lack of money, meaning that we passed through life with a rather narrow set of options. Take Halloween for example.

About October 25, my mother would ask me what I wanted to be for Halloween.  The menu of choices was limited to things we already had around the house. I could be a ghost. Several years before one old bed sheet had been sacrificed, and would serve as a costume for fledgling ghosts for many years to come. I could be a cowboy, wearing clothes I already had. I could be a hobo, clad in some things my dad was ready to throw away. I could be a soldier in some of his old army clothes. That was it. Some other kids more richly endowed with money and/or creative parents had other options. Some boys got to be pirates or clowns. Some girls got to be princesses or ballerinas. (No boy ever dressed as a prince. Parents knew that if you dressed a boy like a prince he would grow up to be a serial killer.)

About the same time the great costume discussion was going on, my father would bring home a pumpkin. Dad had a keen eye for irregularly shaped pumpkins; they probably cost less than those tedious round ones did. The pumpkin would sit around the house for a few days as we all hoped that it would carve itself. When it failed to do so, Dad would cut a hole in the top of it and Mom would dig out the insides and then one of them would attempt to cut out eyes and a nose and a mouth. My parents had to do the cutting. They knew I would cut off a finger if I tried to do it myself. As it happens, their skills were such that the pumpkin still looked like it had been carved by a third grader. Blood was usually involved.

On Halloween, I would take my costume to school, embarrassed that once again I had landed in the lower rung of costumes in the class. Following afternoon recess we would all put on our costumes and parade around. The teachers did not wear costumes. Most of us knew that they were, in fact, witches, so they tried to camouflage their identity by wearing ordinary human clothes, if you could call those long shapeless blue dresses and big black shoes with laces and heavy heels ordinary human clothes.

After dinner, Mom would put a candle inside the pumpkin and put it out on the front step as all the other women in the neighborhood were doing at the same moment and consider the Halloween decorating done. Then she would hand me an old pillow case and send me forth to go door to door Trick-or-Treating in the full expectation that I would come home with the pillow case filled. Mom was fonder of the candy than I was, so always gave a stirring pep talk before I went out the door. 

There was some sport to Trick-or-Treating in those days. If we didn’t get any treats from a home, we would soap their windows or throw corn on the porch.  On the other hand, the Houstons always tied their German Shepherd by the front door, just daring you to make your way past Fang to ring the doorbell; and Mr. Mower loved to sit in the front bushes with a hose in his hand ready to squirt unsuspecting cowboys, ghosts and ballerinas.

By the time I was 11, I left the candy harvesting to my younger siblings, so that my friends and I could concentrate on the whole trick aspect of the holiday. On Halloween afternoons, we made it a point to go past the school before the teachers left so that we could not only soap their car windows but as much of the car itself as possible. While some of us were soaping, the handier and more adventurous lads would let the air out of a tire or, ideally, two. We lived close enough to farms on the edge of town to have ready access to manure, so every year we would pull the old “ring the doorbell and start the bag of manure in front of the door on fire and run” trick once or twice. Speaking of our agrarian neighbors, it is entirely possible that I might have known something about the upending of an outhouse or two, but I am not sure the statute of limitations has run out on that.

I did eat my share of the candy after Halloween was over. I didn’t usually stray far from the chocolate, but Mrs. Finegar always baked cookies which she wrapped in wax paper before she put them in your bag, and Mrs. Johanson made wonderful fudge. We ate it and were glad.

By the evening of November 1, some neighborhood rapscallion would have commandeered the pumpkin off our front steps and smashed it on the sidewalk.  I always expressed shock that anyone could be so malicious, even though I had probably smashed a few pumpkins by then myself. Good old Halloween.

Our neighbor Mrs. Zachmeyer was out in her yard straightening her Halloween decorations when I walked past with my dogs the other day. Insofar as her yard has been decorated for Halloween since just after Labor Day, it isn’t surprising that some of the witches and goblins are starting to sag and the orange streamers are fading.

“The big day is almost here” I said to her by way of greeting.

“Oh, I can hardly wait. It’s so exciting.”

“What are little Samantha and little Leon wearing for the costumes?”

“Samantha is going to be Batgirl and Leon, bless his heart, is going to be a Transformer. I found this wonderful site online and got a really good deal by ordering their costumes in July. The Transformer suit was only $50, and I got the Batgirl for $35, so I had enough left to get a costume for myself, and I found this wonderful Fantasy Butterfly costume for only $60. It has fishnet stockings and a garter belt and a bustier. Unfortunately I’m a medium and they only had small left, but I took it anyway. My husband says it looks just fine.”

“I’m sure it does” I said, trying not to think of Mrs. Zachmeyer’s size 14 wedged into a size 6. “Are your kids going to wear their costumes in school?”

“Oh no. One third-grader comes from a family of radical Schwenkfelders, and they object to Halloween as a heathen holiday, so it’s no costumes in school this year, but they can put them on when they get home.”

“And then head right out Trick-or-Treating.”

“Not exactly. You can’t be too careful, you know. One of our neighbors might be injecting cyanide into the Three Musketeers bars this year. Besides, with this fungal meningitis business around, I don’t want to take any chances. What’s more,” she went on, looking me up and down, “I’m sure you’re aware of the dangers of childhood obesity.”

“So no Trick-or-Treating?”

“Well, the neighbors and I have an agreement that our kids will go to each other’s houses. Mrs. Young is going to give out baby carrots, and Mrs. Mancini will do celery sticks and Mrs. Howard will distribute broccoli, and I’m going to give out some nice tofu squares.”

“Sounds terrific.”

“It’ll be just delightful. I’m sure the kids will love it. I just hope we don’t get any of those trickster people like we had last year. Did you know that someone had the nerve, the absolute nerve, to throw candy wrappers on our porch last year?  It was awful. We called the police. I hope something like that doesn’t happen again.”

“I feel your pain.”

“Besides, Mr. Zachmeyer and I have three Halloween parties to attend this year.  Adults only.” She leered and winked. “I told you about my costume, and he is going as a Chippendale dancer.  It’s going to be wonderful.”

I know Mr. Zachmeyer. He hasn’t had visible abs since he was 12. A Chippendale dancer. My mind was boggled, and I walked on.

At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, I miss the old Halloweens. Maybe we didn’t have either money or creativity, but I think we had better Halloweens than my neighbors have today. If the Zachmeyers had an outhouse I would happily upend it.