Halloween Memories

There’s a certain childlike innocence about Halloween. It’s childlike because it’s best captured through the eager eyes of young children. Perhaps no holiday other than Christmas brings forth more enthusiasm than Halloween for youngsters.

Quite possibly, for a kid, it’s tough to say which yields more joy. Christmas certainly has its upside. After all, who can deny the happiness of receiving a roomful of gifts? But, for a child, these gifts come at a cost. You must wear stiff clothes, suffer through a long Mass, and put up with the boredom of even longer dinners with the extended family. All this keeps you from playing with those toys that so excite you.

Halloween, on the other hand, offers only free candy. OK, bags full of free candy. The point is, there are no toys. Just candy.

Ah, but candy! That forbidden fruit that drives your dentist mad. For one night (and the few days after until the supply of the good candy is depleted), children immerse themselves in the joy of sweets.

But wait! There’s more!

Rather than fancy clothes, Halloween provides the chance to wear something that rises from your imagination. It’s the one night when you can pretend to be someone—or something—else. You can be your favorite superhero. You can become a scary monster. You can be the funniest person you know. And, best of all, your parents actively encourage you to be as creative as possible.

Of course, if your mother was like my mother, she’d be the one who got as creative as possible.

Buying a costume costs money. Having just finished building our new home on Abbott Parkway, it made little sense to pay for an item we’d use only once. Such was the case when I was four years old and my brother was on the verge of turning three. Given this dilemma, what did my mother do?

She bought two oversized orange pillowcases and cut holes for our arms and head. Once placed over us, she stuffed wadded-up newspapers inside and pinned the bottom so the paper wouldn’t fall out. For the stem she fashioned some extra fabric (dark green, of course) together and cut out holes for our eyes, nose and mouth. It looked like a ski mask. Or something a bank robber would wear. Finally, she draped some light green fabric over our shoulders to symbolize leaves.

Off we went. Up and down the street. How long it took those tiny legs on that half mile trek I don’t remember. As it turned out, walking in a sack stuffed with paper proved more difficult than you can imagine. I’m pretty sure most of Kenny’s paper leaked out during our first-ever trick-or-treat excursion. But it was worth it to get home and pour that candy on the kitchen table.

Dad showed us how to sort the goodies. We showed him how to separate out the baddies (the candy we didn’t like). Dad then ate the baddies, showing us the concept of the “Dad Tax,” his payment for services rendered in chaperoning us on our inaugural Halloween saunter. (Ironically, this pumpkin costume was the one Halloween costume to be reused when I played the part of a jack-o’-lantern in our third-grade play.)

Emboldened by this experience, my mother decided to hone her garment making skills.

Apparently, this is what happens when you’re studying to obtain a master’s degree in home economics. Not only do you force your kids to listen to classical music on their Show ‘N Tell record player, but you also use them as living mannequins.

Truth be told, neither experience was as bad as it sounds. When you’re learning to play the violin, you’re not afraid of classical music. And the mannequin thing was fun. At least for a while. If you’re a kid that likes to run around outside, you can only stay frozen for a limited amount of time. Still, we got a couple of nice suit jackets out of the ordeal.

Suit jackets. Fancy clothes. Think Christmas. Think Easter. Think sitting through a two-hour High Mass. Then having to eat a seven-course meal with grandparents and great-grandparents. Oh, boy, doesn’t that sound like something every kid looks forward to?

Maybe, deep down, my mother knew how my brother and I felt about this. I wouldn’t be surprised. She regularly demonstrated a sixth sense when it came to matters of this nature. Just as Kenny and I would get bored with a particular activity, she’d come up with some out-of-the-blue twist that turned it into fun.

Such was the story of our days playing the part of a mannequin.

Before I get into that, I must digress for a moment. Remember how I said we thought freezing like a mannequin was fun (at first)? That’s because my mother actually had a real-life mannequin. She used it for the homework she had to do for her classes. (There’s a joke in there somewhere. You know, something about doing homework for your home economics class. Anyway…)

One year, no doubt after seeing us suffer through the exhaustion of posing to be fitted for a new Christmas jacket, my mother suddenly asked us, “How about if I made you a Halloween costume?”

Boy, did we get excited. You see, having experienced several Halloweens by now and seeing all the other kids’ costumes, one of the most appealing things about All Hallow’s Eve was dressing up in a costume. OK, getting free candy was the number one thing. But dressing up like someone/something came in a close second.

This particular one stands out as the most imaginative. It had to be in second grade for me, (first grade for Kenny). Our mother had us pick out something we wanted to dress up as. She showed us pictures from a book. Kenny liked the color red, so he picked out a devil costume. I liked the color blue. I guess there was nothing blue in that collection. It took me longer to pick out something.

At the time, I was just on the verge of ending my dinosaur phase (which would be replaced by my outer space phase that remains to this day). No one dressed as dinosaurs in those days, but, lo and behold, there be dragons! It was green, which was close enough to blue.

I pointed to the picture of the kid in the dragon costume and looked at Mom. “Can you make that for me? And can you make it so I can breathe fire?”

She laughed. Both costumes offered her a delightful challenge. She had to design them from scratch. It took some creativity to figure out how to craft the devil horns for Kenny. When she discovered the solution, she decided my dragon needed a horn, too. We both had tails, although mine was fatter and shorter than Kenny’s.

Imagine the excitement the three of us felt when we entered the darkness that Halloween night to begin the half-mile trek up and down our street. We not only felt the exhilaration of getting our soon-to-be candy-filled bags, but we also wanted to show off our new full body costumes to our friends.

The night did not disappoint on both counts. A few of our friends who bought their costumes wished they could have homemade costumes like us. And when we came home, barely able to carry our now heavy bags, we dashed to the kitchen table. My father was just as impatient as us to sort through our loot. We dumped the bags and separated the candy into two piles: the good candy and the bad candy.

Mom smiled, knowing she had accomplished yet another Halloween trick.

Dad smiled, knowing his treat (a.k.a. the Dad Tax) awaited him.

Kenny and I smiled, too. But we just wanted to start eating that forbidden fruit.