All Hallow's Evening Rambler for October 31, 2009

I'm not one of those people...

who are Really into Halloween. You know, those people...the ones who spend money and put up a whole lot of decorations in their front yard. Fake tombstones, fake bats, fake ghosts and the like. Or the adults who go to costume parties. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as long as it's all in good fun and you're keeping things in perspective.

It's just not all that big a deal to me. My Christian faith likely has something to do with it - I've never totally understood why people feel the need to turn the spotlight on the Enemy one evening of the year. Let me hasten to add though that I am Not on a crusade against trick-or-treating.

I think it's more my reserved temperament, I've never had much interest in costume parties or big crowds. Also the neighborhood I grew up in didn't have many kids, and the houses were on pretty big lots spaced kind of far apart. We would buy candy and turn on the front light, but even on our busiest Halloween, we only had 11 trick-or-treater's, and some years none at all.

Of course there was always candy left over for us, and that was usually the highlight of the day. All that said, I have some Halloween memories...

Punkins of the past

Yes, I know it's pumpkins. I just like saying punkins.

We'd usually buy a pumpkin, cut a hole in the top and empty out the seeds and wet stringy stuff (what impressed me the first time I did that was how cold all that gook was). Then I'd draw the face I wanted on my pumpkin, and when I was little, Mom would carve it. Later when I was trusted with a knife, I'd do that. My jack-o-lanterns had the typical triangular eyes and nose, and always a smiling mouth; usually with square teeth, but at least once with pointed teeth.

Once as an adult while working at a mapping company, I entered a pumpkin carving contest. I carved a pumpkin globe, the natural creases on the pumpkin made dandy longitude lines to help in spacing and figuring the shape of the continents.

Fun stuff all that...a temporary sculpture that doesn't have to be perfect. And as a bonus, you get to put a candle inside and set fire to it!

One thing I'd like to try, out in the middle of the yard of course, is to replace the candle with a sparkler, or a cone, or a roman candle. Can you imagine?

My last trick-or-treat outing

Earlier this week I recalled the last time I went trick-or-treating, when I was in Junior High (when I was a boy we didn't have "middle school").

First, let me set this up a bit. My best friend lived three blocks away, in a neighborhood with more kids; Halloween was a bigger deal over there. It seemed he could engineer and build anything, and his younger brother had quite a lot of artistic talent. I don't recall how many years they did this, but they would come up with really elaborate spook houses in their basement. The lights would be out, my friend would be the guide, and at some unexpected point his brother would jump out and like to scare the wits out of me.

So one day my friend said, "Robert, let's you and me make our own costumes and go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood". That sounded like fun, and we both agreed it was now or never. The next year we knew we probably wouldn't want to do that.

Our costumes weren't quite like the ordinary, which was the idea. His started out as an old sheet with eye holes, the basic homemade ghost outfit. His added touch was a battery powered blinking red light from Radio Shack, which he had on top of his head under the ghost sheet. Why a blinking light? Well, why not? It was neat.

I was a walking television set. My Dad had a glass face plate for an actual television, and I found a cardboard box big enough to cut a hole for that glass plate. I attached a couple of knobs on the front of the box for on-off and the channel selector, and I used half a Styrofoam ball and a couple of soda straws for the "rabbit ears" antenna on top.

Right after sunset on the 31st, we each grabbed a bag and started to make the rounds in his neighborhood. Once or twice we'd get the look - you know, "aren't you kids a bit big for this?" - but people were nice and we did get some candy.

More often than not people thought I was trying for a robot costume ("no, I'm a teevee"), and my friend's flashing light earned some puzzled looks. We got our picture taken at a house or two. Still a fond memory, to this day.

Trunk-or-treat

We went to "trunk-or-treat" for the first time this year, at our Church parking lot (they held it last year too, but this was a first for us this year). The weather cooperated, and there was quite a turnout. About two dozen cars and trucks parked, and some were decorated elaborately. We got out lawn chairs and sat down with our bucket of candy. A lot of kids came in from the neighborhood around the church, and everybody had a good time.

Next to our car was one of the Elders, who was dressed in an old fashioned black and white striped prisoner's uniform. Possibly the highlight of the evening for me was when a family came to our car with a nine year old (or maybe ten?) daughter dressed as a policewoman...an excellent costume. After my wife gave her some candy, I pointed over to our elder and said, "Officer! Arrest that man!". She and her whole family smiled at that.

(Well, my family's downstairs watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas" DVD. I'd better go down and see if there's any candy left.