Happy Halloween
Boo!
It’s finally here, folks, that spookiest of days, the 31st of October!
When I was a kid in the 70’s, Halloween sure was weird. We wore costumes bought from the drugstore made of garbage bags, and plastic masks with eye holes nowhere near the location of actual eyes. When you stuck your tongue through the mouth-hole (and you ALWAYS stuck your tongue through the mouth-hole, it was some sort of natural law no one could resist), it inevitably came away bloody. If you had no drug-store costume, you wore your dad’s old flannel shirt, used your mom’s Avon mascara to paint on a beard, and went as a bum.
If your mother wasn’t tired out from trying to decide what to put in a Jell-o mold that hadn’t already been done (marshmallows? Salmon? Cat food? Grass clippings?), she would sew your costume. In my family, we had three homemade costumes: a witch, a devil, and a clown. The witch costume was actually my mom’s; she would black out a tooth, put on a clay nose complete with wart, and visit our parochial school the last week of October to terrorize the kindergartners. The nuns thought it was HILARIOUS.
The night of Halloween, we would tear through the neighborhood like rabid weasels, trampling people’s lawns as they yelled at us to use the sidewalks, collecting candy in pillowcases, trying to see out of our misaligned eye holes and tripping over curbs. In Oklahoma, half the time October was sweltering and the other half it was frigid. You were either dripping sweat behind your petroleum-based mask, or covering up your entire costume behind a Sears and Roebuck’s winter parka.
No matter. When we got home, oh, it was glorious! We’d dump our candy out on the living room shag rug and TRADE. Like miniature brokers at the New York Stock Exchange, we’d haggle and argue and cajole in order to garner the candy with the highest value. Reese’s cups? Gold. Tootsie Roll Pops? Silver. Those weird orange-and-brown-wrapped peanut butter taffies? Pork Bellies (ew). With our stomachs full and our teeth rotting, we’d fall into a candy-induced stupor and dream of making it all last until Christmas.
Ah, memories. Today, the smell of a giant mixing bowl filled with Halloween candy transports me STRAIGHT back there, to 1978, when kids were kids and parents were, well…wait. Where were our parents?
Never mind.
In honor of the day, I took out my spookiest story, brushed it off, polished it to a high gloss, and posted it to my website!
It’s not actually very spooky, as I am not a horror writer and have no plans to be one.
However, it DOES feature the Grim Reaper, several demons, a flock of harpies, multiple monsters, and one very determined human girl whose mission it is to rescue her best friend from the Seventh Circle of Hell. It’s touching and entertaining and exciting, and it might have the teensiest, tiniest bit of a message. It’s included in my short story collection, Rise and Other Tales, but it’s been cleaned up and expanded a bit. I hope you will give it a look-see and tell me what you think. It’s one of my favorites. You can read it HERE.
The doorbell is ringing and the children have begun to arrive. I hope you have a simply splendid Halloween, and that you get all your favorite candies. Tomorrow is November 1st, and we all know what that means.
Time to set up the Christmas tree.
Falalalala, lala la la!
J.W. Rose