Halloween Tales
Confessions of a Formerly Youthful Miscreant
(Please note: This is a repost of an essay I wrote last Halloween. It did not get many views then, so I thought perhaps I should tweak it a little bit and repost it. However, after reading it, I realized that it doesn’t need any tweaking at all. It’s good the way it is! Give it a chance and I bet you’ll think so, too. Happy Halloween to all of you Halloweeners out there!)
Add Halloween to the ever-growing list of things I don’t get. I mean, I had no trouble understanding it as a child. We had to dress up in a costume, knock on the doors of neighbors we knew but hardly interacted with since the previous Halloween, and we’d come home with a big bucket of candy. What’s not to get? And, why would I question it? Not when I was gorging myself on Almond Joys and PayDays. The full sized ones, too, not the tiny, micro-mini candy bars they give out now.
For many years, my costume was a skeleton that probably cost $1.99 at K-Mart. I’ll bet it was flammable as hell, too. Luckily, at that time, neither parent smoked. I wore that skeleton costume for, gosh, I can’t remember how long. I do vaguely remember being a hobo once or twice. (Wait - probably can’t say “hobo” anymore. Now it would be “a person experiencing hobo-ness.”)
As I’ve mentioned many times before, I grew up in a rural area. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have neighbors nearby. We did. On our stretch of US 62, there were maybe a dozen homes within a couple of miles of each other.
We would occasionally hear stories about how in the big cities, kids would get apples with razor blades embedded in them or candy bars with straight pins, but we never worried about that. Although, people who gave out fruit on Halloween were kind of suspect, you know? Like, “Come on, old lady, I want a fistful of candy, not a stupid apple.” Fruit people just might get their windows soaped at some point in the Halloween season. At least that’s what I heard.
Of course we kids were all familiar with the phrase, “Trick or treat!” We had to say it at every house. And, as young children, we were all about the treats. As we got older, we learned from the bigger kids about the tricks. That’s when Halloween became fun.
I say that because, at least in my personal experience, preteens and early teens often enter that mischievous, destructive, boundary-testing phase. And, Halloween was the perfect vehicle for this because if there are going to be treats, then obviously there have to be tricks, right? It’s like a law of nature.
When my friends and I aged out of the begging for candy thing, we still found ways to participate in the Halloween season. I would assume the statute of limitations has run out on our youthful indiscretions, so I guess it would be okay to reveal some of our getting-in-the-spirit-of-Halloween activities.
For example, jack-o-lanterns were an attractive target for us. We would smash them right there on the porch, leaving a mess for the homeowner to clean up. Or we would steal them and once we had enough, we would line them up across the road, one side to the other, and watch them get run over by cars and trucks that happened by.
Another favorite Halloween trick was to sling tomatoes at passing cars. They would hit with a satisfying splat. The downside to tomatoes was that they were usually mushy and juicy and a bit of a chore to lug around.
The best thing to pitch at passing vehicles was feed corn. This was corn that was grown specifically for livestock. It was allowed to dry and harden, then it was shelled, a process that removed the kernels from the cob, then it was stored and fed to the animals in the winter.
But, as Halloween season approached, rambunctious juveniles such as us, would get a five gallon bucket full of this feed corn, stand in the bushes or woods on the side of the road, and pepper any vehicle that had the misfortune of driving through our gauntlet. To the occupants of the car, it must have sounded like a brief, but intense, hailstorm.
(Watch this, I’m going to use “corn” as a verb.) One time, we corned this guy in a bright yellow ‘69 or ‘70 Buick Skylark. He stomped the brakes and did a 180 right there in the middle of the road. We scattered into the fields behind us while the guy pulled into the nearest driveway. We could hear him hollering at us. Needless to say, he was pissed. I would have been, too. That car was really sharp.
As far as I know, none of us suffered any repercussions as a result of our Halloween pranks. Even when we corned a state police car or several school buses carrying our high school football team and cheerleaders, nothing happened. Heck, we all lived right there in that short stretch of highway, how could anyone not know it was us creating such mayhem? Maybe it was simply dismissed as kids engaging in relatively harmless Halloween tricks. Nowadays, I suppose somebody would whip out their gun and shoot at us, to teach us a lesson. Eventually, we aged out of the Halloween pranks, too. I haven’t corned a car in . . . oh, it’s been months.
All right, let’s fast forward about a thousand years from tales of my misspent youth, to the present day. What the deal with Halloween now that I am at the other end of the age spectrum?
Halloween is a much bigger enterprise now than it ever was back in the ancient times of my youth. And, that’s fine. While it is true that I do not get what the attraction is for adults, what does it matter? It is a simple statement of fact. I don’t get Halloween. Who cares?
To those who really get into Halloween - dressing up in costumes, decorating their residences and workplaces, building elaborate haunted houses in their garages, preparing wonderful treats for all the neighborhood kids - hey, that’s great. Have fun and enjoy yourselves, why not? All I’m saying is Halloween is not for me and I do not feel obligated to participate in this societal custom.
My wife and I have been together for a long time, and our views on how to deal with Halloween have evolved. At first, we would give out candy to any neighborhood ghosts, ghouls, or goblins who came to the door. I, of course, found this to be uncomfortable, and the constant doorbell ringing drove the dogs crazy, but I did it, because it was a neighborly thing to do, and that’s just what was done on Halloween.
At some point, we decided we did not want to do the candy giveaway anymore, so we started going out for dinner on Halloween night. Which was nice.
Then one year, we did not feel like going out, and we did not feel like giving out treats, so we left our outdoor light off, closed our shutters, and spent a quiet evening at home. We realized we were not required to participate in this Halloween ritual, so we opted out. And, that works for us.
It is true, back in my day, people like us would have had our windows soaped, and our house would have been pelted with tomatoes and/or eggs. But, we’re not back in my day anymore, are we?
My brothers, all three of them 🙄, always dressed as Hobo’s, meanwhile I dressed as a princess. Then my little sister was born, she was the princess and I was the queen!😂
Oh, yes. This brought back memories. I always dressed as a bum. I just put on my brother/s clothes that were way too big for me. It was easy. We lived in the country. The houses were all about half a mile apart....So we begged for a ride downtown, where there was only a population then of 1300. It was fun and there was always one or two houses we were afraid to go into because witches answered the door and scared the crap out of us. The bigger kids, in high school, would go out and turn over outhouses that still stood by some of the barns. The Basketball team would bring out one of their dad's Farmall Tractor and put the manure spreader on the back, then drive it to their most rival basketball team at a nearby town and spread manure down their main street. To me, that was the best trick of all. It was always in the paper next day with pictures of the main street, now smelling sweet of manure and fly laden. It was better than our homecoming parades, though they were fun. I love having memories....as it reminds me I'm still alive. Thanks for helping me dig them up on my least desired "hollow day".