The Best Halloween

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening TImes Editor H alloween is right around the corner! OK, the exclamation point at the end of that sentence might be a little much. These days, the most exciting thing for me about Halloween is that the next day is the first of November – the absolute earliest day I can put up my Christmas decorations without anyone thinking I’m weird.

But still, Halloween is cool. It’s a fun time for kids of all ages and your participation level is entirely up to you. My kids are long past trick-or-treat age so I’ll probably go up to the church and help out with the Fall Festival (or whatever it is we’re calling our Definitely-not-Halloween Party this year (Sunday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., at Marion First Baptist Church! Live music, fun and games, hay rides, trunk-or-treat and more!). I’m sure I’ll watch a scary movie or two as well as a I wait in vain for any trick-or-treaters at my house. Trick-or-treating is on the decline in general and we live at the last house on the left of a dead-end street with only five houses on it, so I’m guessing that bowl of candy by my front door will go unused again this year … which is fine, because I filled it with Twix and Almond Joy this year and those are my two favorite candies! (exclamation point totally appropriate this time) I have always had a soft spot in my heart, though, for Halloween. I guess it’s because I always loved the idea of dressing up as whatever your mind could conceive. Even as a little kid, picking out one of those $5 vinyl suits with the cheap plastic masks was super fun. I distinctly remember being Batman, C-3P0, Spider-Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. We always had a bunch of kids in our pack of trick-or-treaters, including myself, my sisters, my cousins who lived down the street, and whatever other neighborhood kids wanted to go door-todoor with us.

Each year was different and each year was fun in its own way, but the BEST Halloween was when I was 11. That year, I came up with the idea that I wanted to be a mummy. And no, I didn’t mean some vinyl mummy suit with a cheap plastic mask. I meant a real mummy! And my Mom and Dad made it happen.

My Dad brought home plenty of gauze and tape from the gym where he coached and my Mom went to town wrapping me up from head to toe, even applying some of your classic grease paint make-up to give my face the perfect undead look.

That was also the first year I went to a Halloween Party. It was at a friend’s house and it was a big old spooky house that you just knew probably had a ghost or two. We played games and listened to records like “Monster Mash” and “Black Magic Woman” and whatever was on the Doctor Demento album. And it was the first time I ever bobbed for apples. It’s harder than you think … but I had an advantage! I had lost the two teeth on either side of my two front teeth that year and I was able to basically “beaver chomp” the apples. It also helped my overall mummy look with the missing teeth.

I trick-or-treated well into my teens. I used the excuse that I had a little sister that was seven years younger than me, so I had to take her around, but I probably would have gone anyway. By that time, I was usually a zombie or axe murderer of some kind but, again, it’s cool to dress up as whatever your mind can come up with.

Of course, later on, I had some kids of my own, and we definitely picked up on the Halloween tradition. I think they all wore the same homemade pumpkin outfit for their first Halloweens, but pretty soon, I got to run around town with my own little Batman and Buzz Lightyear and Disney princess. And yes, I usually dressed up too, because why not. I was Elvis one year, a Hippie once. My favorite idea though, was when I put on an old sweatsuit and stapled candy bars all over myself and went around as The Candy Man. I let the kids yank their choice of candy off my suit like some sort of sweet-tooth version of a fruit tree. Yes, in retrospect, that’s probably a little too creepy, but it didn’t seem so at the time.

And of course, because it was such a hit when I was a kid, my oldest son also got to be a mummy. And in all honesty, he made a better mummy than I did, mostly because he fully committed to the character, skulking around like a 3,000 year-old reanimated sarcophagus. His little brother was the cutest little Spider-Man that year and they racked up on the candy. And, because one of them doesn’t like bubble gum and the other doesn’t like caramel, I also racked up on some of my favorite treats.

OK, maybe THAT was the best Halloween!