Tag: halloween

This is the first Hal­loween in some­thing like a decade in which I’ve not watched The Crow on Dev­il’s Night and The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show on All Hal­lows Eve itself. What with my dou­ble-gim­péd­ness and var­i­ous oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ties, I had to for­go the plea­sure.

I did, how­ev­er, get to hand out can­dy for the first time in about a decade as well. I esti­mat­ed fair­ly well, based on the num­ber of gob­lins that my neigh­bor had last year. I have per­haps 20 Kit Kats left. It was fun to sit out on the porch and encour­age the lit­tlest ones to say “Trick or Treat” and give the old­er kids with­out cos­tumes shit for not hav­ing cos­tumes. I made paper cranes for the adults, and it was good to pass the time fold­ing in between groups of gob­lins. The moth­ers were all tick­led to get them.

The Pump­kin Tide

I saw thou­sands of pump­kins last night
come float­ing in on the tide,
bump­ing up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beach­es;
it must be Hal­loween in the sea.

–Richard Brauti­gan, 1968

I carved on Sun­day with some friends. Last minute plan­ning result­ed in a lack of pump­kin, but carv­ing water­mel­ons was just as fun, and ulti­mate­ly more effec­tive on dis­play, when carved and lit appro­pri­ate­ly. Still my favorite hol­i­day, even as the fla­vor changes with age.