- Last Year
- Even your pumpkin is sweating it out on your porch! - justtheprettiest
Hershey's Miniatures of the Damned
Well, Halloween is nearly upon us. Last year was the first year in this house and I've got to say that we were really disappointed. We came from a neighborhood where the kids were all young thugs and sometimes we didn't even know if the cars rolling up contained trick-or-treaters or a drive-by. It was some pretty edgy trick or treating. Still, in the spirit of the season, we sat on the porch under the red light bulb and celebrated the reason for the season. The mister with a bandana over his face and me dressed up like...er..I don't know usually something dead...it varies...anyway...
...the kids here are...well...wimps. Last year, we piled up all excited on the porch swing with candy waiting on the kids. One by one, they were too scared to come on our porch. First the mister was playing the musical saw for effect and you'd think he was skinning children from the response he got. The kids stood at the end of the driveway shaking and crying. Their parents kept trying to coax them up but they weren't having it. They chose to bypass our house instead. We felt like lepers! The new lepers in the neighborhood who make kids cry!
I then convinced him to put the saw away and move on to the accordion. Still scared! Scared of the accordion! We weren't even dressed up scary! They were scared of an accordion!
Finally, with no music and little left of the joy of the season, we shoved huge fists full of candy into the bags of the few kids who actually ended up in our midst and went inside thoroughly disappointed.
I remember as a kid being scared but excited as we went from stranger's house to stranger's house even with our mom trailing several yards behind us keeping a watchful eye. With white knuckles, we went to the man's house who dressed up like the Phantom of the Opera and played the huge organ in his front room....we even went to the house of the Confederates ( a Southern biker gang who were considered our local version of the Hell's Angels - I remember going to their door dressed like an angel with a white choir robe on and a halo made out of a wire hanger and Christmas tinsel and having one of the girl Confederates scream, "Ya'll come look!! She's a little angel!!" after which a pile of big bikers laughed at how sweet I was )...
...What did we do? We worked it out and got the loot, like kids should do. Razors in apples? So what! Arsenic in the popcorn balls? Who gives a flying flip!? Mean dogs?? Creepy Neighbors?? Bring it on!! We knew our jobs. We put on those tight little plastic suits that split in the crotch after two sets of front steps and rustled for blocks, blind as bats and clutching our cheap plastic K-Mart jack-o-lanterns and screeching behind sweaty plastic masks, "TRICK OR TREAT!!" while our eyelashes fought for room and our tongues were cut to shreds as we tried to suck in air through the tiny mouth holes. Why? Because we were kids! It was Halloween! We got it done!
I don't know what's wrong with the kids in our area but it's bumming me out for this year. I want to dress all scary and jump out at them and shriek like a wild banshee. I want to chase them down the street while waving a plastic sickle. I want to make them stick their hands into jars of fake brains and gizzards. I want them to step up to the plate, for pete's sake!
I hate to sound like an old grouch but I sure hope it's better this year....or next year, they are going to get a bucket full of stale candy corn and cheap circus peanuts at the end of the driveway with a note that says, "You had your chance. You blew it. Now get out of my yard."
Comments and faves
Miss Retro Modern (68 months ago | reply)
I remember going up to houses on Halloween that you wouldn't even want to approach on a sunny day in June! What's up with these kids?
I don't have any luck around here either. My street is only semi-residential so there aren't many kids to begin with. Plus, my door is around the back and even the pizza guy has trouble finding it. I wish you better luck this year!
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
I know! We were brave because there was a chance...even a slight one...that we would get candy! Do you think their parents instill too much fear in them? Is candy no longer a big enough reward?
Now, as for you...to live where pizza delivery can't find you makes me feel really sad. Pizza delivery is one of the rights given to us in the constitution. Oh wait...Canada probably doesn't follow our rules, huh? : )
Miss Retro Modern (68 months ago | reply)
I know there's some stuff in there about language rights, but I'm not sure about the pizza. It is sad for me though, isn't it?
Maybe kids just get candy all the time now? When I was a kid there wasn't even a store within walking distance. We had to make that bag of loot LAST.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
It IS sad. So many things in life are easier to swallow if you can just easily order pizza (and then eat the whole thing). I think that's it...kids have become jaded to candy. Now, they just want the crack cocaine and the video games. I remember walking to the store and on the way back, eating a Reggie Jackson (star baseball player) candy bar and having one of my little kid teeth pulled completely out by the caramel. I put the tooth aside and continued to eat the candy bar. THAT'S how important candy was back then. (not quite a "walked 10 miles both ways to school in the snow with no shoes" story but close)
gilsta2003 (68 months ago | reply)
The year I dressed as Ace Frehley, I got invited into the Confederates' house! We had a good discussion about KISS, as I recall.
We're in the boonies now. No trick-or-treaters this or any year, alas.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Hey! Look who's here! You got invited IN? What happened? Did you go inside? I'm sure they LOVED that costume. I am going to repost that photo. That was the best costume ever in our family, I'd say. Yes, if you guys get ANY knocks on the door....DO NOT answer.
gilsta2003 (68 months ago | reply)
They thought my costume rocked! There were a bunch of bearded guys sitting around with their "old ladies", confederate flags on the walls of course, and we talked about who our favorite member of KISS was. I doubt they offered me a beer or anything, but that's probably only because mom was out on the porch.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
I just love that story! And I love that mom let you go inside! It surprises me...but I like it. "Old Ladies"...heh.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Ken Duffy: Thanks for the tag! : )
Frank Synopsis (68 months ago | reply)
Kids in our neighborhood don't like to come up our driveway. (Wimps!) But then again we aren't too sanguine about some of the older kids who tend to show up later in the evening. "Costumes? Who needs 'em? They'll still give me candy." It's like a social contract is broken. Sometimes we make a go of it but other times we just cruise to some neighborhoods in Berkeley where there are cool house decorations and lots of people to see.
I am mentioned in a book about Berkeley for a memory I had about trick-or-treating in my neighborhood c. late 1960s. I'll see if I can dig up the text and quote it... (It doesn't really compare to "the Confederates"!)
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Ken: I hope you can find that. I'd like to see it! We had those older kids at the old house. No costumes...in street clothes...with pillowcases full of candy. They wouldn't even speak to us just shove the pillowcase in our general direction while looking bored. Then they would ask for extra candy for their supposed brother or sister who was in the car. ha!
Dania Hurley (68 months ago | reply)
The skeleton rocks, Miss Eartha. You and the Mr. sound like so much fun! Your lame-o big crybaby neighbor kids are missing out.
apricotX is back! (68 months ago | reply)
the chillin' are afraid to aproach y'all 'cause you're too COOL.
Jiffy Cat (68 months ago | reply)
Heck yeah, the kids now-a-days are lame. I can remember going to every door but the local child molester's.
why?whynot?! (68 months ago | reply)
hehe what's wrong with the new generation? ANYTHING FOR CANDY !!!!!!...well, let me rephrase that...not anything......I think that maybe it must be the neighborhood. My son starts asking on the first day of october "how long is it until halloween "?I think he looses sleep at night over it.On actual Halloween night I have to make him stop. if it were up to him that pillowcase( King size btw)would be full to the brim and then he would empty it and go back for seconds.when i was young growing up in Delaware we had a day before halloween called "mischief night" anyone ever heard of it?all the vandals would come out ( US)dressed in black and roll yards, soap windows and throw corn at all the houses. homeowners would wait in darkened doorways armed with waterhoses ready to defend their homesteads. it was a given tradition ( might have been the thug neighborhood) and then the next evening we would dress in our costumes and be rewarded with candy for our bad behavior. I have never heard anything else about this tradition since I have moved here to the south.I guess the times are changing, why if that happened nowadays the police would be called in and the kids would be facing juvi-hall...what happened to fun ?
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Dania: Thanks! Maybe sooner or later, the kids will learn that there is some fun to be had at our house.
ApricotX: Ha! I WISH that were it!
Jiffty Cat: Now THAT might have seriously been the house to skip!
Why?whynot!: Well, your son gives me hope at least! I've never lived anywhere that had a Mischief Night. That sounds crazy! Corn? What kind of corn? This sounds like a truly interesting tradition.
why?whynot?! (68 months ago | reply)
dried corn and the bare husks...I have a friend that lives in Maryland and he says they still do it..It was wild!
srk1941 (68 months ago | reply)
Eartha, you tickle the living daylights out of me!!!!
I wish you had your own radio broadcast, coast to coast! You are the most entertaining leper I've ever had the luck to come across!!!
justtheprettiest (68 months ago | reply)
I know, I thought we'd give out Sunsweet Ones (individually wrapped prunes) this year. We do have some great little one's on our street -- they'd get gummy eyeballs or something kinda cool. But the thugs that come to our door (usually more than once), with no costume, no "trick or treat", just really big hands and no "thank you" are getting PRUNES! I, too, long for the candy-corn sweet Halloweens of yesterday.
Frank Synopsis (68 months ago | reply)
Giving them *prunes* that's really rich! Thanks for the larf.
You know, Detroit and other locales have had problems with some Mischief Night on steroids/crank/crack -- turned into an "arson-night." I think the worst years for that are past, not sure.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Whywhynot: Dried corn and husks! I love it! By the end of the night, the whole town must look like the abandoned downtown from "Children of the Corn" (well without psychotic killer children).
srk1941: Thanks! I'll take that compliment even with the "leper" in it! : )
justtheprettiest: Prunes! I love the idea of having separate treats for the rude kids. Hmm...
Ken Duffy: Oh my gosh...Why does everything started as good natured fun always have to turn bad?
YawningDog (68 months ago | reply)
Oh Eartha, I hear you! My Halloween memories are just like yours, and my Halloween luck is now even worse. NO trick-or-treaters at all in this neighborhood. :( I can't wait to move back downtown again where I can be the scary lady all the kids love to run from after they get their treats.
Frank Synopsis (68 months ago | reply)
I looked at the book again that I mentioned earlier ("Tales from the Elmwood," by Burl Willes). My quote was disappointingly terse. So I will tell a little more, with additional context from the book itself.
I lived in the Elmwood neighborhood of Berkeley, where there was a fantastically strange and creepy house on a big lot around the corner from us. The house, built in 1910 by Edward Marquis, has vaguely Mission-revival types of features (by way of the Addams Family), with a large balcony over the porch and a big off-center oval window. In the late '60s, it was kind of run-down and overgrown, and we romantically thought of it as the local haunted house.
In those days, drug-store candy bars were either a nickel or a dime. Most Halloween candy offerings that weren't little individually wrapped pieces were either nickel-type candy bars or sometimes smaller ones (the special marketing of Halloween candy hadn't really ramped up yet).
Well, the anticlimactic rest of my story is that one year I decided there were really lights on in that old house--so why not ring the bell and see who answers? As long as I didn't shut the gate, I wouldn't have too far to run to get back to the sidewalk... Anyway, I rang the bell or knocked on the door (maybe both), and eventually an old woman came to the door! She remarked on my costume, and tossed something into my bag. I went home in wonderment. Turns out she had given me a DIME candy bar. (I suppose not many kids rang that bell, so she could afford to!) I felt like I'd done a cool thing braving the scary house and finding a generous old lady. (The book suggests she was a member of the original Marquis family.)
In later years the house was called "Penzance" and began to feature superb Halloween decorations each year, which probably jump-started what is now a huge Halloween turnout on that otherwise quiet Berkeley street.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
YawningDog: Oh! I wish that for you too! Soon, I hope?
Ken Duffy: How cool is that??! That poor little lady was probably glad to finally get a trick or treater! Do you have a photo of the house now or back during those days?
Frank Synopsis (68 months ago | reply)
There's one in the book, which I may scan and post (with attribution). Can't find one on the Web to link to.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Cool! Can't wait to see!
Frank Synopsis (68 months ago | reply)
The "haunted house" from my story above:
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
That's a REALLY cool looking house!
Frank Synopsis (68 months ago | reply)
Yeah, isn't it though? I forgot to mention that there was a big picturesque crack right above the main porch section over the door, causing it to sag. (It was fixed later after the house changed hands in the 1970s.)
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Oh no! I hope someone has fixed that. I want this house to go on forever! The detail on it is beautiful.
YawningDog (68 months ago | reply)
Well, I just went and scared the hell out of my neighbors just to get some Halloween ya-yas out. :D But the husband, just after he turned away to get me some candy (I was kneeling at their door with a long coat and boxing gloves on :D :D), turned back and gave me a look like he might know me. So I jumped up and lunged at him: "Yaaaaaaaah!!!!" and he caught me and hugged me: "I knew it was you! Those eyes!" I yelled, "Dammit, I should have worn sunglasses!" He said he was startled enough, thanks, and that if he hadn't realized it was me at the last moment he probably would have shit. :D
Gotta take your fun where you can get it.
* Eartha Kitsch * (68 months ago | reply)
Yawning Dog: Ha! On your knees...that's a great idea! I hope you at least got some candy for real. I actually went over and talked to our crazy neighbors last night. We never really talk to them because they are odd birds but I figured Halloween warranted it. : )