I blame the following series of events on Steven Spielberg and his gross but adorable alien E.T. It was October of 1982, I was 12 years old, and I absolutely loved Halloween. Mostly just the free candy part, but dressing up and going door-to-door was also exciting. Jack-O-Lanterns and fallen leaves on the ground with a crisp chill of fall in the air and streets filled with sugar-high kids also added to the thrill. We had always taken pillowcase covers for the loot. Forget about those plastic pumpkin heads that filled up far too quickly. My goal was to save the candy supply from Halloween until Christmas when I could restock the stash from all the goodies left in my stocking (which was also oversized).
Up until that year, the preparation for Halloween had started long before October 31. A frequent topic of conversation among us neighborhood kids was what our costume would be. We also discussed the best routes for trick or treating, targeting those “rich houses” that gave out the best treats, some even handing out full-size candy bars! We learned to skip over the lame dentist’s place (who lived alone with no kids) and gave out toothbrushes with miniature tubes of toothpaste – TOOTHBRUSHES! He was long overdue to have his house pummeled with eggs or the large oak tree in his front yard strewn with toilet paper.
But I’d noticed cracks forming in these long-held rituals over the last several months. A few of the neighborhood girls had casually announced that they might “be busy” this year whenever the topic came up. These were the girls that had somehow gotten taller than us boys and were forming curves in places that had previously been flat. During the summer, they would show up at the cabin (a generous word for the hovel we’d thrown together from scraped lumber and bent nails our parents allowed us to take), but they wouldn’t stay long, and showed little interest in the b.b. gun fights (only shoot below the face, and only pump the rifle two times) or slogging through the nearby stream in search of tadpoles and minnows. They no longer wore “play clothes” and seemed particularly interested in their hairstyles or the unnatural colored makeup now applied to their lips and faces. As October 31 loomed closer, they announced plans to go to some Halloween Party or another with a list of guests that we had always collectively considered “the cool kids,” which meant that we both feared and loathed them all.
In response to the girls, most of the neighborhood boys also announced plans to attend Cool Kid Parties, but their plans were vague and fluid, like the newly reported girlfriends they’d met at summer camp, most of whom lived in far-off lands like Canada or New Jersey. I suspected that these sad sacks would end up playing Atari games alone on Halloween night (there was always an old t.v. dedicated to Atari games in the darkly paneled basements of our houses back then) just to avoid this new-found awkwardness and shades of shame that were blowing like dark clouds over a holiday we had all cherished so much in the past.
I had resigned myself to staying home as well because the idea of going out by myself to trick or treat raised the first feelings of what would later on in life become full-blown Depression. But then my friend and I watched the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and a new plan started to form. We could go out on our BMX bikes that night! These bikes and the tricks people could do on them were super-cool. The fact that we hadn’t mastered any tricks except going off the homemade jump made of cinder blocks and plywood (I was afraid to use more than one cinder block), made little difference. Being seen on these bikes would remind people of E.T. and would surely negate the fact that we were a bit old to be searching out free candy. Some of the kids in the E.T. movie looked much older than us, after all! As soon as my friend agreed with this logic, I knew I would require a cape to stream out behind me as I rode through the moonlit evening, perhaps being lifted into the night sky with a full moon background like the kids in the E.T. movie were!
And so it was that my friend rolled up to my house, pillowcase in hand, on Halloween evening. We hadn’t discussed costumes at all, having been so focused on the bikes and the flying past the moon part of our plan. I noticed right away that he was wearing a full rubber mask over his head. Which meant he couldn’t be recognized. But I could. I dashed to the costume closet (yes, we actually had a full closet of costumes at my house, but that is material for an entirely different time) and grabbed out a black plastic mask that had been used for a Lone Ranger costume and a Zorro costume in the past. I also grabbed the tube of green face paint we’d used for witches and zombies and applied a good greasy gob to the lower part of my face. My disguise was complete!
At the first house we went to, we had to wait for two toddlers, a princess and a frog, that dottered around in front of us before returning to the Radio Flyer wagon that was made up to look like a royal coach. The adults pulling the pretend carriage were both carrying hobby horses, and both acknowledged me and my friend by name as we pulled up on our bikes. I could hear the scorn in their whinneying voices. Mrs. Miller, the woman giving out candy at the door also recognized us and paused before deciding which treat bowl she would allow us to choose from. I grew up on a dead-end street that drew hundreds of trick-or-treaters each year from all over the Adirondacks. It was standard practice to have segregated treat bowls – one for the neighborhood kids and one for the “others.” My mother, never a shy woman, would often ask children to remove their masks or show proper identification in order to pick from the first-class bowl. If you couldn’t prove local residency, the booby prize was always the same: picking from the Tupperware bowl of Dum Dum lollipops.
The doddering Royal Couple had both been given access to what were clearly Grade A chocolates (even though they were snack-size), so I hadn’t even considered that our treat might be otherwise. I could already taste those M&M’s and was devising a way to funnel the package into my mouth without getting the green face paint on the chocolate as we stepped up to the entranceway, proudly and loudly exclaiming “Trick or Treat!” (At my house, if you didn’t perform this ritual, my Mother would always ask “And what can I do for you?”)
Mrs. Miller’s face was one of pity rather than guilt as she set down one bowl and picked up the other. But it was a strange-looking bowl, not made by Tupperware, and there weren’t any Dum Dums in it. It was filled to the brim with pennies. PENNIES! Her long fingers descended into what I assume was years of the Miller’s unwanted, sticky, rusting pile of green and copper-colored change (barely change, really), which she scooped up and let flow, with all the collected lint and debris, into our empty pillow sacks. I thought of Charlie Brown in one of my favorite Halloween specials, going from door to door and collecting rocks rather than candy. I would have preferred the rock to this filthy offering.
We needed to go to a neighborhood where we had more anonymity and the candy was given out without such flagrant discrimination. My friend suggested just such a place as we pushed past the age-appropriate revelers towards our bikes. It took me several minutes to understand his mumbling through the rubber mask. Across town, there was a newer housing development where older people were rumored to live because, having no kids, or kids that were now adults themselves, they were the only ones who could afford these new houses. The development had no dead-end streets and so, we hoped, didn’t attract as many people. This seemed like the perfect scenario for people with the money to buy loads of good candy and who would also greet any trick-or-treaters with the love, admiration, and most importantly generosity we were looking for. It would be a lengthy ride, but the payoff seemed well worth it.
There wasn’t any wind that night, and my mother had apparently used some type of thick, canvas-weight fabric to stitch together my cape. It wasn’t flying out behind me the way Batman’s or Superman’s did. I had to stand up on my bike to pedal because when I sat down I could hear the back tire making contact with the leaden cloth. BMX bikes of that day had one gear, and after what felt like 50 miles, but was actually ½ mile from our street, I was tiring of the effort. I decided to take a shortcut to our destination (after all, that’s what the kids in E.T. would do). I lead us onto the high school property, cut across the large playing fields, and up into a parking lot located behind the school and adjacent to the gym building. The lot was dimly-lit, and I immediately heard loud music playing from somewhere as we went from the grass of the field to the pavement in the lot.
There was a car parked in the darkest corner, its trunk open and several high school seniors gathered around, sipping from bottles of beer. This wasn’t just any car. It was one of those muscle cars from the 1970s with striped lines across the waxed paint job, shiney chrome rims, and recently scrubbed white letter tires (if you need a good visual, check out Matthew McConaughey’s car from the movie “Dazed and Confused”). The music blasting from the car and filling the parking lot was also from the 1970s – Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin I think, but I wasn’t really concentrating on the music because my heart immediately started pounding out of control and it was becoming very hard to breathe.
I sat down on the bike and continued pedaling, hoping that making myself as small as possible would keep me from being seen. But this was a mistake. My cape became entangled in the rear wheel, causing it to lock into place while also acting as a garrote around my neck and cutting off my air supply completely. The bike came to a sudden, jarring stop. My friend whizzed by me, out of the lot, and off into the shadows. For just a moment, I had an image of Charlie Brown in my head, and Lucy Van Pelt yelling “You Blockhead!”
I pulled at the cape’s cord around my neck that was cutting off my windpipe. It eventually broke and I was able to get the cape off. I then jumped off my bike and frantically pulled and ripped at the cape until it was free from the wheel. I stuffed all of the tattered material into the pillowcase and jumped back on the bike, praying for the power of E.T. to lift me into the moonlight.
Just then, the song booming from McConaughey’s muscle car stopped and the night was filled with an awful silence. I started to peddle faster, standing up on the bike and pressing hard on the peddles while clutching the awful sack with my shredded cape and handful of pennies. I worked up the courage to glance over toward the car. I could see senior boys and girls standing there, way too many to all fit in one vehicle. And none of them was in costume. But every eye was on me. One boy, the tallest, biggest one – a Sasquatch of a senior, had his beer bottle upended, finishing the last dregs. He then stepped closer and I heard his low growl.
“Hey, you! Asshole! You’re too old to trick or treat!”
The next song began just as I saw his arm hurl something in my direction. If you’ve never had a glass bottle go so close to your head that it grazes your ear, you’re really missing out on a unique experience. The “Whoop, Whoop, Whoop” sound the bottle makes as it twirls through the air is something impossible to describe but easy to remember – forever – if you just close your eyes and bring the horrible internal film back at any given time. It’s truly that distinctive! There were other bottles thrown after that first one, but they just bounced off my body or missed me completely, shattering on the asphalt as they landed.
My friend hadn’t gone too far, and I bore him no ill will for not stopping. I probably would have done the same, perhaps riding all the way home without him. The fact that he had stopped at all was impressive to me. It’s hard to truly translate the Darwinian nature of some of these years, but there was definitely a “survival of the fittest” feel to it all. As I was writing this I went back to watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” for some inspiration and warm remembrances of those times. But instead I was reminded of just how “un-woke” we were back in those days. My favorite fall special as a kid references murder and suicide within the first five minutes, and goes on to teach about how unpopular kids need a fair amount of shunning and verbal abuse to, to – well, the point of why they need this was never really clear…
As for my friend and I, we rode our bikes back to my house, took a few handfuls of my Mom’s best candy, and went to play Atari in the basement. Halloween as we’d once known it was dead…
AUTHOR’S NOTE – I don’t intend to paint or shape my early adolescent years as tougher or more emotionally dramatic and traumatic than anyone else’s with this tale. I started this piece with the premise of what an odd holiday Halloween is for kids – it’s one that kids are forced to “age out” of, and that aging out is such a subjective and fluid transition for young people. Now that the words are typed out, I also see something about the role of grit or resiliency, or lessons hard learned that require young people to feel hurt, sadness, or the pain that any parent wants to protect their kid from. Regardless of the era in which you grew up, I think some of these lessons might be necessary for our human growth and maturation. Perhaps in these modern times we sometimes unintentionally do more harm than good by setting up expectations that the jeering Sasquatches in dark parking lots and the Lucy Van Pelts continually pulling away our footballs don’t exist anymore. Maybe these Darwinian trials and trainings need to play out to strengthen and prepare us for those people and situations that we wish would become enlightened over time, but that history (even our most recent history) tells me might be a long time in coming – if it ever comes at all. I am old (or older) now and have only my own experiences and childhood recollections of good times, weird times, and seared memories of whooping bottles past my head to recount and ponder. I believe it was all necessary and useful in making me who I am today – and, in the end, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I remember the costume. You took my leather gloves and cut the fingers out of them. Glad dad and I didn’t know what you were up to. One correction, I never gave out dum-dum lollipop
. There was good candy, and Class B. However never Dum-Dums. I wouldn’t go that low. Sorry I will be missing Halloween this year. I still love it. Not a big deal over here. Give yourself a honey crisp apple this year. Happy Halloween!
At a certain age most people look back and wonder where it all went. The crispness of the fall air has been replaced by 25 degree temperatures, a North wind, swollen feet, and sciatica. You wonder why Radio Flyer couldn’t make that handle just 3 inches longer as your own kids are begging you to pull it faster and farther.
Fast forward a few more years and the kids you so tirelessly muled for are now upstairs with their imaginary online frineds
Hidden in PS5 and occulous, locked in a virtual world where everyday can be Halloween, Christmas or even D-Day and for some unknown reason you reward this with pizza and sushi while your wife makes those candied apples that have always disappeared, but Noone has ever witnessed having been eaten.
Your words made me miss the back ache, frozen fingers, and swollen feet. It reminds me of a world that required courage and validation and at times,when you least expect it, lead to the magical moments that you so eloquently described.
Thank you.
Ps. I’m going to start that to bowl candy system this week.
I remember the costume. You took my leather gloves and cut the fingers out of them. Glad dad and I didn’t know what you were up to. One correction, I never gave out dum-dum lollipop
. There was good candy, and Class B. However never Dum-Dums. I wouldn’t go that low. Sorry I will be missing Halloween this year. I still love it. Not a big deal over here. Give yourself a honey crisp apple this year. Happy Halloween!
At a certain age most people look back and wonder where it all went. The crispness of the fall air has been replaced by 25 degree temperatures, a North wind, swollen feet, and sciatica. You wonder why Radio Flyer couldn’t make that handle just 3 inches longer as your own kids are begging you to pull it faster and farther.
Fast forward a few more years and the kids you so tirelessly muled for are now upstairs with their imaginary online frineds
Hidden in PS5 and occulous, locked in a virtual world where everyday can be Halloween, Christmas or even D-Day and for some unknown reason you reward this with pizza and sushi while your wife makes those candied apples that have always disappeared, but Noone has ever witnessed having been eaten.
Your words made me miss the back ache, frozen fingers, and swollen feet. It reminds me of a world that required courage and validation and at times,when you least expect it, lead to the magical moments that you so eloquently described.
Thank you.
Ps. I’m going to start that to bowl candy system this week.
John