Halloweenie

I think Halloween is out of control. Not for the kids, for the adults. Yes my friends let me spin this tale of a children's holiday gone amok.
When I was a child, back in the cave days, Halloween was a close number 2 to Christmas for being my favorite day. We lived in a development with maybe two hundred homes that were about 15 feet apart. This added up to a pillowcase full of candy and or penny's. The apples or oranges that people use to give were quickly disposed of by hurling them at your buddy's. Any who it was, to me, a bizarro day where all the rules about eating candy and how much you can eat were thrown right out the window. For a couple of days after Halloween you could eat candy for all three meals. A week after Halloween was another holiday, lesser know, it was called Big Dentist Day. It was only practiced by a few people who enjoyed sticking their fingers into some one's else's mouth.
When I was a kid most people had hand made costumes. Not like today were all you have to do is go to Walmart and buy one of your favorite characters costumes. Who would want to get dressed up as Bill Gates or Al Roaker. The kids that I hung around with usually dressed as bums, that was the costume of choice. It was an easy make, a couple of patches pinned to your clothing and some black cork on your face as a beard. A stick with a handkerchief tied to the end, sort of a bum suitcase. Their was one kid who took it to a new level, he was way ahead of his time, he pushed around an old refrigerator box and babbled incoherently all night. As people where handing out the candy they would comment about his bum costume, he would correct them and say "I am not a bum, I am homeless."

Their was also a couple of cowboys and I remember one year my mother dressed me up as a girl. I am still going to therapy for that.
In the 50's they had masks that were made of, I think it was,it sure felt like, fiberglass. I wore one of these masks one time and almost cut my head off. It use to rub on you skin and feel quite uncomfortable as the edges tryed to saw through your skin. But most of the kids wore the Lone Ranger type mask. There were a couple of full face masks, that were made of rubber. But if you wore one of these masks you would sweat so much that your head would shrink 3 sizes.But getting back.
In my youth we usually decorated by drawing a pumpkin or a witch and we would tape to our front door or in our windows. Sometimes our parents would buy a real pumpkin, and we would all clean it out and then carve eyes a nose and a mouth into the pumpkin. Then stick a candle in the inside. And it wasn't these fantasy dantasy carved faces, it was a triangle for the eyes and nose, and a smile with 3 teeth. The pumpkins usually lasted only about a day, because of dreaded Madurski bros., they would slither over in the dark of night destroying every pumpkin on the planet.
But today the parents are not satisfied with these simple decorations, no we have to have heads and characters that move and talk. We need to engulf our whole property in fake spider webs. We need blow up characters, that are encased in a plastic bubbles that need a electric blower on at all times to keep them inflated. I think it is getting a little carried away. Why just the other day I passed a home that had a blow up of the complete broadway cast of Les Miserables it was really bizarre.

So Halloween has changed alot since my day. I think parents are frighten to send their children out to trick or treat any more. Because of all of the weird stories that are told. By the way some of those stories are not true. Like the razor blade in the apple story. And it is a shame because to me they were some of the fondness memories I had in my younger life.

P.S. And get rid of those blow up figures. There not scary at all.