Halloween

I spent Halloween taking my kids to a few church fall festivals in the neighborhood. They enjoyed doing the trunk-or-treat thing. I filled up on some hot-dogs.




Trunk-or-Treat isn't the same thing as going door to door. These days the Christian community is fearful of Halloween. Back in my youth we dressed ourselves up in scary costumes and raided as many of the Noccalula mountain homes that we could. We brought home tons of candy. I enjoyed roaming around dimly lit neighborhoods with my all my sibs. My last venture as a kid in costume was as Dracula. I would do my own make-up by that time. I believe I fixed my little sister Cindy's face up as a clown. Brook owned an old powder blue MG convertible. He drove us all around the mountain until our bags were full and it was too late to ring anymore door bells.

Do you remember Halloween Carnivals? Do you remember cake walks? I mean CAKE walks - not the cup cake walks they have today. R.A. Mitchell used to have a great Halloween Carnival. There was something going on from one end of that school to another. They also had a haunted walk behind the stage in the lunch room. For years, if a child happened to venture behind the stage, he/she would find a casket back there...creepy. A former teacher recently told me that the school owned the casket for well over twenty years.

I remember my childhood friend Billy Daughette had a weather balloon he'd ordered from the back of a magazine. Somehow he got hold of a bunch of leftover balloons from the R.A. Mitchell Halloween Carnival. He filled up that weather balloon and a bunch of us kids sat in a circle on his front lawn taking turns inhaling helium from that huge weather balloon of his. We'd each take a deep breath, try to talk, and then die laughing at the results. I surprised one of us didn't float away or bust a lung.

No, Halloween never bothered me. I never understood why Christian's got their panties in such a wad about it. It is nice at least that they offer alternatives. The fall festival alternatives are fun for the kids but just not the same. I came home last night and watched the recent remake of War Of The Worlds. I was determined to watch something a little on the spooky side on Halloween night. Mom had the girls upstairs going through all the their candy. It made me think of my youth...dumping my bag year after year on the living room floor.

By the way...it seems to me that teaching kids that it's okay to accept candy from strangers from the trunk of cars isn't a very wise thing to do either.