It’s no secret that Steven and I love Halloween. One of the highlights of my year is to stand on my front porch October 31 with my husband and my dog, and greet the trick or treaters. Last night that is just what I did. Of course you knew I was going to write a blog post about it.
Trick or treating in Herkimer was scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. I thought I would have just enough time after work to go running, take a shower and just possibly make my blog post.
When I returned from my run, I saw that Steven had added to our outside decorations. Boney, our blow up skellington, was poised between the two trash cans (Tuesday is garbage day). Our new ghoul, a six foot tall Grim Reaper was on the porch. We purchased the Reaper recently at a garage sale for a very good price. His eyes and lamp light up, his head turns, and he says creepy things, punctuated by groans or laughter. Eerie laughter, of course. He is light or sound activated. We spent a good portion of the evening stomping on the porch.
As usual I overestimated myself, so the blog post did not get done till later. I was searching for some warm clothes. We often dress in costumes for the trick or treaters, but this year we did not have our act together. Steven wore his green gardening gloves, which look a little oogie. We put Tabby’s hot dog costume on her. She is surprisingly good natured about keeping that hot dog on. We were ready and waiting for the crowd!
And we waited. And we waited. What a slow start! It doesn’t help that they moved the silly time change to a week later, so we were in broad daylight. Who wants to go trick or treating in the daylight? I remember in the olden days, when I was a little girl. The city didn’t dictate when trick or treating began and ended, and we always went out after dark. It was exciting. We especially liked the houses that had light up doorbells.
At last the kids started coming. Once again, I admired and envied the costumes. I remember when I was a kid, store bought costumes were so dumb. You’d have a plastic mask that pretty much looked like the character, whatever it was, and a polyester jump suit with a picture of the character on the chest. I remember thinking they were extremely ridiculous. Caspar the Friendly Ghost (for example) doesn’t go around with a picture of himself on his chest! (Not that I would ever have been Caspar; I thought he was kind of dumb too.) Costumes today are awesome! Still, I love the homemade ones best. One kid was a playing card. He had a joker hat on and a cardboard front and back. His mother said, “That’s what he wanted to be! I just take requests!” Awesome mom. Another memorable costume was a kid with ripped clothes and blood on his face. So simple, yet so profound.
A number of dogs were out, some in costume. Tabby took exception to a couple of them, but we had her on the leash and nothing untoward happened. I’ve read that it is best to shut your dogs up in a separate room during trick or treating. They might be frightened of the strange costumes. For one thing, Tabby’s feeling would be very hurt if we did something so fun on the front porch and shut her up inside. For another thing, she LOVED seeing all those people in costumes. Many people complimented her on her hot dog, and many petted her. She had as good a time as we did.
Fun as it was, I was not sorry to see seven o’clock roll around. It was cold, and I didn’t even have oogie gardening gloves on. We went inside to find the cheesey Mummy’s Curse from 1964 on TCM. We gave candy to a few stragglers, and started making plans for Halloween 2012.
Mohawk Valley Girl 