This Is Halloween

this one is for my family and friends who remember...

It started when I was a kid, and my aunts and uncles created the neighborhood "Haunted House" around my Grandma's big old Victorian. It's been obsessive love ever since.

Second only to Christmas, Halloween was the "New Year's Eve" for Children- and we saw it as the true beginning of our holiday season. We knew were were luckier than most, and certainly we did it differently than anyone else:
For as long as I can remember, we didn't trick-or-treat----
we decorated, costumed, and put on a show!

Halloween started for us around October 1st. Really. That's when we could officially begin the decorating of our own house. First, Dad would bring in THE BOXES. This was before people used color-coded Rubbermaid bins to hold holiday memories, so we would wait patiently in the living room for Mom to open each cardboard box and make sure no vermin had gotten to it during the year. They never had, and that first waft of Halloween memories would rush out, instantly intoxicating even the most jaded teen of us.

Candy Corn adrenalin took over.
We would take out the old raggedy wall hangings, and plastic pumpkin buckets. The Gurley witch, ghost and jack-o-lantern candles- warped and slightly melted from our summer heat, but never burned. Faded accordion tissue pop-up ghosts. Years of school projects. Masks. Old party favors. The fragile posterboard witch that was really too ugly to put up, and her arms and legs tended to fall off, but she had a place of honor on the hall closet door. Later, little orange "Christmas" lights would top off the whole thing, but when we were very young, we had large lightbulbs that we put into our regular lamps- red and golden yellow.

We had special Halloween-themed books (ever read "The Pumpkin Giant?"), and an old LP of Mike and Carol's Haunted Mansion visit. To this day, my sibs and I can recite the entire story, complete with the "spooky sounds" Disney tacked onto side B.
So we began to turn our California tract home into our version of a witch's lair or vampire's castle. This was long before Dept. 56 and Radko and black "Halloween Trees". And in those days, Halloween wasn't about blood and guts; this was pre-Jason and Michael Myers. So in retrospect, our decorating was very innocent, almost sweet- mostly handmade construction and tissue paper. Still, we were spooked, and there was a chill down our spines as we sat in the glow of our handiwork in the evening hours, surrounded by leering spooks and creeps.

Costumes were an issue. In our family, we were not encouraged to be anything cute or pre-packaged. No Raggedy Anns. No Clowns. No Babies with giant pacifiers. Something cleverly funny might be alright, but really only something monster-y would do. The Wolfman, Frankenstein and Dracula were great- but even better if you were a zombie or shambling corpse. It was about the scare-factor, not the gore, and we worked on it from about, oh, around the 5th of July.
Once October came, we were at it in a frenzy. I don't know how my parents handled so many of us wanting immediate and complete attention to our costume needs. I only have 3 kids, and make too many trips to the fabric store and Cinema Secrets makeup counter. Still, they always made sure we looked as eerie as we felt. And I don't remember ever feeling unprepared for the big night.

Sometime around the 29th, we would go get pumpkins. One for each of us kids, and the big one for Daddy to carve. The search for the "perfect" one has been described many times, and everyone has their own memories that I can't begin to touch here. What stands out for me is how my Dad would gather all of us around him and make a huge production of picking the right knives to do the job. Dad was an artist- wood being his usual medium. Once a year, though, he worked in vegetable, and his jack-o-lanterns were stunning. They had eyebrows and ears, and the most remarkable personalities...no triangular noses for him. I inherited that talent, I am proud to say, and I gather my tools and kids in the same way.

October 31st always began with donuts. Winchell's orange and chocolate- sprinkled. A treat we rarely got even as a dessert the rest of the year, was allowed-no, encouraged- as breakfast fare on this holy day of sugardom. I think Mom made us have a glass of milk with them, but certainly we were sent to school with a buzz. We went to Catholic school, and for a few years we had to dress as a Saint or Apostle, or not at all. This bizarre idea was countered by the fact that Nov 1st was All Saint's Day - a Holy Day of Obligation and, therefore, a day off. This was a miracle in kid-dom, as all the "publics" had to get up for school the day after Halloween, and we "Catholics" got to sleep off our candy hangovers.
If we were allowed to wear costumes, we would usually be the only ones in our classes that were spooky. As I entered adolescence, I learned to make 2 costumes- one for my real holiday, and a generic, boring but socially-acceptable cute witch or scarecrow for my school costume. It was ok. We never won any of the costume contests- those prizes usually went to poofy clown costume that someone's mom made, or to one of the 14 Hobos. But we knew who our true peer group was, and were counting the minutes until the bell rang and we could head to Mecca.

When we'd get over the hill to Gram's, the house was usually about 3/4 finished. Our Uncles and Aunts had taken the day off work and transformed the usually beautiful old home into a decrepit old mansion. The louvered windows were removed, and replaced with gauze curtains and fans blowing from the inside. Cobwebs surrounded the huge front porch. The long walkway was enclosed and given the thread and plastic spider treatment. And everywhere throughout the immense front yard were various animatronics, robots, and impromptu graves. My Uncle Bill- and later brother Mike- made talking skeletons and Grim Reapers. And always there was an organ on the front balcony (this was a really great old house) playing spooky music for the neighborhood.

We were fortunate to have access to all kinds of props and makeup from local TV or movie studios- nearly everyone in the family was in The Business. I wore latex face pieces before Roddy McDowell--- ok, maybe not before, but pretty close.
There was always a Mc Donald's meal (lunch or dinner depending on whether you had to go to school that day ). This is a tradition that has been honored by everyone in the family for, lo, these many years--- even one year when my sister was in Venice, Italy (and we were in Venice, CA) for the 31st and she found a McD's there.
Then we would begin the process of "Getting Ready".

The downstairs den was the makeup room. My Aunts had set up a couple of tables with lights and hair dryers, and tons of palettes and brushes... the smell of greasepaint still sends me back to that room. We would eagerly tear into the big bag of costumes that Mom had brought- proudly showing our cousins what we had created for this special night. Sometimes we'd find the perfect last detail in Gram's basement- a hood we knew would go great with our costume, or a pair of gloves, or scarf. She had 40 years of leftovers that we all shared. Even an ill-prepared friend who dropped by could find a complete costume somewhere in that house, and once clothed, could have themselves transformed into a Halloween ghoul, ready to take their place in the show.

Once made up, we would go out to the front yard and just wander around. As it got dark, neighbor kids would begin to line the picket fence surrounding the property. Strangely, they would wait until we would let them in- although the 3 foot tall gate was easy to open and no one hesitated the rest of the year. The throng of people would gather and wait. Finally, one of my Uncles would walk down the long path to the gate, and silently open his arms in "Welcome". The party had begun.
Once the gate was opened, the line started in- up the walkway, under the canopy of spiders and ghouls to the front porch, where we took turns acting as the treat-giver. After they got their candy, they had to make the long walk around the porch to the other side gate, passing all kinds of creepy props and people along the way.
That was all there was to it- no inside tours, though many asked- but the decorations, the ambiance, the spooky lights, the music, the dry-ice fog along the ground- the show was enough!
Sometimes a few of us would pretend to be some of the many mannequins and robots lining the path to the candy, only to periodically jump out at the older kids in the line. Oh the sheer joy of seeing a scoffing and too-old teen trick-or-treater scream in fear -- and then blush in embarrassment! We never did it to little kids, and we were afraid of some of the rougher-looking parents (this was Venice in the 70's and 80's), but we had our fun.

Oh, I could go on and on. About the Sideshow we did 3 or 4 times a night from the side balcony. About the "lifesized" King Kong that came up over the house one year (Gram's hands were brown and black for weeks after she dyed a bazillion kingsized sheets). About the hundreds of people that lined the street, and how we were required to get a permit in later years, complete with patrol cops keeping an eye on the crowd. About the after-glow, when the crowds were gone, and we were tired and buzzing, and sweating off our face pieces in the real marina fog.
You kinda had to be there.

But here's what this is about. There were more and more people every year who came up to us and said, "I grew up near here, and now I live 30 miles away, but I had to bring my girlfriend to see this", or "I used to come every year and one time that guy over there scared me so bad I almost fainted, and now I decorate my house kinda like this", or "I don't even live here anymore but this is my 4 year old and I wanted him to know what a real Halloween is supposed to be like". Even now, we occasionally meet someone who grew up in that area, and when I mention that I had family there, they always say, "Oh, you had that great big Haunted House!"

And, most of all, the people who said, "This was Halloween to me when I was growing up. Thank you."

Gram's house has been dark for almost 10 years now. The house was sold when most of family- including Gram- moved out of state. I ache over that loss. But life goes on and nothing stays the same.
Sigh.

But....
Now MY house is the neighborhood's best decorated. Yes, I start on October 1st. I still lean toward the vintage, rather than the generic Dept. 56 stuff. And I still have those warped Gurley candles on my mantle. I carve 10-15 jack-o-lanterns and light them with candles, and on the 31st, I line the walkway and porch with them. We have the Halloween party everyone waits for, and I am proud to say that our neighbors thank us for making the holiday special for their kids.

And my cousins' houses are the best in their neighborhoods. My brother Mike creates a huge Haunted House where he lives in Missouri- it was even featured on HGTV's "Extreme Halloween" Show last year (it'll be on again this year, look for it). And I know there are a whole bunch of people out there who celebrate Halloween with the spirit of fun and sharing that we do, because we helped them feel it all those years ago. And they'll pass it along to their kids, and their neighbors. And so on, and so on.....

And now I am passing it on to YOU.
Go decorate. A few black and orange streamers on the front porch, a couple of pumpkins, a plastic hanging skeleton. Be home in the early evening on the 31st. Turn on the porch light. Wear a mask or costume when you answer the door to trick-or-treaters (but not too scary- remember the little kids!). Maybe turn on some spooky music. Definitely get the better candy to give out- not the small fruity hard balls, but the real chocolate stuff (again, think about your audience, no parent wants their 3 year old sucking on a marble!). And watch "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". You'll be amazed at how those first strains of Peanuts' music can make your load a little lighter.
And then let me know how you did; I'd love to hear about it.

Happy Halloween!