Good old fashioned Halloween is still alive!

Halloween….oh what a night!

When we were children we deliberated for weeks and weeks trying to figure out what to be for Halloween.  Then, about a week before Halloween, we had to make our final decisions.  The next week was spent getting together odds and ends of clothing, maybe using old wire clothes hangers, cardboard and paste, to make our costumes….sometimes we’d be a clown, or an Indian, or a witch, maybe a cowboy, or a ghost, or a strange monster that we had created in our imaginations.  The costumes were always homemade.

Halloween night after we had carved our pumpkins, melted wax in the bottom so the candle would stay in place, and put our lit pumpkin out on the front porch, it would be time to get into our costumes so we could go out and trick or treat.  

We’d often raid our Mother’s makeup cabinet for the final touch to our costume.  We’d smear the makeup on our face, brighten our cheeks and lips, exaggerate our eye brows, or maybe we’d use Mother’s entire tube of bright red lipstick to depict flowing blood if we were a bleeding monster.  And our Mother wouldn’t get mad.  She’d just shrug and laugh and tell us how the “blood” was so realistic and “gross." Then we knew that we had achieved the PERFECT Halloween costume.

We’d head out, totally unsupervised, to trick or treat with a large paper grocery bag (remember them?).  We’d run from house to house with hoards of other brightly-colored costumed friends….sometimes there’d be 10 or more children trick or treating the same home, especially if we’d passed the word the treats were extra good.  By good, that means that they were extra large candy bars.  

Homemade popcorn balls were not our favorite. And handing out anything healthy or fruit-like was simply unacceptable!  No adult would dare, and if they did, they were asking for a “trick.”

This was back in the 50’s, before any home would even hand out penny candy----that was considered cheap and unworthy of all the work we had out into our costumes. The average candy bar that we were given in the 50’s was the size of today's giant candy bars.  

So you can imagine our haul on Halloween night—after 2-3 hours our grocery bag would be almost full.  We’d be in seventh heaven….days or maybe weeks of candy to gorge ourselves on.  And our parents never said a word or doled out our candy.  I guess they figured we’d worked awfully hard for it, so it was ours.  

When I was older, I realized that our parents had taught us lesson, without saying a word.  If we ate too much candy, we were punished---we were sick the rest of the night.  We all only did that one time.

When Dan and I became parents our children had the same old fashioned Halloweens—in charge of their own costumes and free run of the neighborhood gathering hoards of candy with their friends. 

Jules and Emily:

Candice, Owen, Rachelle, Alison:

Halloween spirit never left me…I just had to join in on all the fun and get dressed up when I handed out the candy to the trick or treaters….and my children (who would always come trick or treating at least two times).  Every time I pretended not to know them—and they got to “surprise” me when they told me that they were my very own children.

Jules (Jules and Dan built this incredible costume together):

Owen, Candice, Rachelle:

Emily and Jules (once again, Dad and Jules built this video game costume together….what fun!)

Our grandchildren have continued the Halloween tradition….

Adam and Ian 16 years ago—all dressed up to celebrate Halloween.

In 2010 I spent a very special day with Marina and Stella in their homemade costumes getting ready for Halloween at the Halloween Greenbank Farm festival.

Later, Marina and Stella went to trick or treat their great grandpa Vernon at his beach cabin.

10 years ago when we were visiting Soren, Sebastian, Emily, and Sean, we all went trick or treating together.  It was a wonderful Halloween!

One Halloween when we lived deep in the woods on Whidbey Island there was a knock on the door.  Surprise!!!!.... for the first time in years, we had trick or treaters.  It was two of the cutest little witches that we have ever seen….Marina and Stella!

Years later, Soren and Sebastian sent us a photo of them all dressed up on their Halloween costumes as they headed out to spend the evening trick or treating their neighborhood.  They looked kind of scary…typical boys!

Two years ago when Hannah was 1-1/2 years old, Mila used her makeup artistic skills to turn Hannah into a magical kitty creature.

A year ago Aryana, Easton, Alison, and Calvin carved pumpkins and put them on their porch to greet the kids who were all dressed up and out trick or treating.

Last year on Halloween night Marina, Stella, and Candice went trick or treating in some pretty cool costumes on Pearl Street in their town of Boulder, Colorado.

Soren and Sebastian dressed up when they were in New York City with Emily.  They have awfully good taste in their friends….none other than John Wayne, the man with “true grit,” just like their Grandpa Dan!

The Halloween tradition is still going strong….this year Hannah and Vernon dressed up as a ballerina and a pilot.  Mila and Owen took them to a Halloween party where they all celebrated with their friends….what fun!

And Candice and her team while out scouting the route for her new ultramarathon race, the Arizona 300, took a break for some Halloween fun….

Living in Leisure World, with only “active adults” 55+ years old, it seemed as if Halloween had died.  

But no—it hasn’t died with our children and grandchildren, and it hasn’t died in Pine, Arizona.  A few weeks before Halloween, we looked out the front door at night, and saw orange pumpkins glowing across the street.  The next morning we went to investigate and found that overnight the ghouls had invaded Pine!

We are elated….Halloween is not only alive, but flourishing! 

Yes it is….we celebrated Halloween by having fun dancing exuberantly to the theme song for The Adam’s Family and Bobby "Boris" Pickett's The Monster Mash.

We had better stock up on some old fashioned extra large candy bars for when all the ghosts, goblins, angels, monsters, princesses, and witches come trick or treating at our door in two days.  We can't wait!!!!!