An Ode to Halloweens Past

Turn back the clock 40 years. It’s October 31st and my two sons, ages 5 and 7, can’t wait to go Trick or Treating. Under their white ghost costumes, they’re wearing Winnie the Pooh sleepers. Zia Road, a dirt street at the edge of town, has little traffic. We know most of the neighbors and their children, Cathy Ortiz across the street, the Dixon kids, the Joneses, the Lovato boys. We’ve gone to just a couple of their houses when a misty rain begins to fall. The temperature’s dropping; before we know it, rain has turned to snow. Falling thick and fast. What started out as fun is now operation Outward Bound. The boys finally agree it’s time to go home. Not a big candy haul, but, truth be told, they don’t even like candy. The fun is collecting as much as possible. Home early, we make a fire in the fireplace and they count their candy. Most of it will simply be hoarded.

Fast forward ten years, the 1980s. The children in the neighborhood are now teenagers, including my own. They’re all doing Halloween with friends. Parents are left home to celebrate on their own. I’m throwing a Halloween party, complete with a costume contest. I’ve decked the halls with skeletons, spiderwebs, jack o lanterns, skulls and witches. The ghetto blaster plays a sound track of creaking doors, dripping water, eerie scuttling and fiendish laughter. I’ve rented a Dorothy costume and encouraged guests to come as other Wizard of Oz characters. The prize, decided by a party attendee who hasn’t entered the contest, goes not to the Oz folks but to Lois, who’s wearing the garb of a creepy black bat.

Another decade gone by…In the 1990s I became an elementary school librarian, the most fun job I’ve ever. As part of the school’s Halloween carnival, the students and I filled the library with pumpkins, stuffed black cats, pictures of witches and other spooky stuff. Fake cobwebs festooned the windows, skeletons dangled in nooks and crannies. Hairy spiders lurked in the bookshelves. I dressed as Nancy Drew and gave small prizes to children who dressed as their favorite book characters. Recordings of children’s books played on my concealed  “ghetto blaster.” They were “books that read themselves,” and also were titles that I’d read during class time read-aloud. Anyone who could tell me the name of the book being narrated would get an award.

What about Halloween of 2023? No one will be coming to the door Trick or Treating, and I’ll probably be at home finishing a re-read of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (selected by my book club). Last weekend, however, I celebrated the holiday early by going to “The Haunted Garden,a night of storytelling, hot cider and bonfires. It was a cold, moonlit eve at Santa Fe Botanical Garden, and it was the perfect setting to savor Halloweens of the past.

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