Halloween Moon
Jonathan Farlow
I'm sitting on our front porch right now eating apples, writing the words that you are presently reading and trying to strike up a conversation with what few trick or treaters that are still drifting by. My daughter's in the bathroom throwing up and seeing as those children stricken by such a malady always seem to call for their Mama, thank God, I grabbed my pen, notebook and a bowl of apples and stepped out onto the front steps. The candy is long gone, Sara having started on it when her take of the evening ran out. Thus I refer back to her current predicament.
It's a beautiful night. Fall is always my favorite time of the year. Besides the fact that the temperature is finally below ninety and football season has started, I just love the feel of autumn. As I sit here a huge full moon is spotted and streaked by clouds, perfect for Halloween. There's a chill in the air but it's not by any means cold yet; multicolored leaves whip by on gusting breezes that sing through the branches of the trees. On top of all that, the air has that smell: The smell of dry leaves and wood smoke that to me has always been the signature for the fall time of year.
The first trick-or-treaters show up as I sit on the steps and try to light a cigar in the wind. They're taller than I am. They're not wearing costumes and they look to be at least fifteen or sixteen years old. "Trick or Treat," says the first, a bone thin mouth breather with a ring through his lip.
"First off," I say, slipping the still unlit cigar into the spirals on my notebook. "How old are you boys and where are your costumes?"
"We don't have to tell you how old we are," says the mouth breather's buddy, a lumpy looking kid who looks like he's standing upright only through intense concentration. "And his Dad says that Halloween is a satanic holiday. So if you don't give us candy just because we aren't wearing costumes that's discrimination on account of our religious beliefs and I'm gonna call the ACLU."
"Trick or Treat," says the mouth breather and they both hold out empty ten gallon trash bags which by the way they're flapping in the breeze tell me that they haven't had any luck so far if I'm not the first victim of this neighborhood shakedown. I bounce a red delicious off Lumpy's head, tell them move on and to be sure and stop by the Muslim's house up the street. He ought to get a kick out of that. I think to myself as Sandra Day O'Connor, Tom Brokaw and Jesse Jackson show up, bum an apple each and head on up the sidewalk.
The first Halloween I remember I was about four or five. I was a Martian. My sisters brought home this plastic Martian mask, sort of a green, super hero looking face with goggles covering the eyes and a purple aviator's cap over the front and sides. Course there was no back. It was just this cheap piece of plastic with a rubber band around the back to hold it on. And there was no costume, just the mask so my sisters had to improvise, a talent which they had long ago perfected. The afternoon of Halloween I was wrapped in tin foil ankle to neck. My sisters put a toy football helmet over my head and the mask, stuck sticks in the holes in the top of the helmet and wrapped them in tin foil as well. I have to admit, and I've seen pictures, I looked great. The only thing was that, when I walked, the pieces of tin foil would start to loosen so I had to walk as little as possible. My enterprising sisters solved this problem as well by standing me on a hand truck and wheeling me through the neighborhood. They would roll me up to a neighbor's front steps, stand me on the porch and ring the doorbell. All I would have to do was hold out the bag and say "trick or treat." Then I would be patted down to make sure the tin foil was snug enough, stuck back on the truck and wheeled down to next house.
For those of you who know me, this account, as well as others of its type, should go towards explaining an awful lot. The lack of a big ego. The lack of that macho pride that women are always complaining about in men. The lack of self-esteem. The tendency to cry during science fiction movies and an irrational fear of hand trucks and tin foil.
Over the next seven or eight years my Halloween costumes included, both with and without my sister's help, the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf man, Superman, Batman, the Incredible Hulk. You just can't go wrong with the classics. Then as I got older I broke tradition. I was Dolly Parton, Mr. T, the "where's the beef" lady and one of the blue ghosts from the PacMan video game.
As we entered high school Halloween costumes became more functional rather than decorative. We had left the trick or treating stage behind long before that for what really made Halloween Halloween: Mayhem, mischief, that's the ticket. The Halloween safety pamphlets you get theses days as well as the public service announcements all say that your child's costume should be easily seen at night. I see the rationals, but where's the fun if you can't blend in with the shadows. That way you can jump out at people or go on commando raids into hated people's yards armed with eight dozen rolls of toilet paper and enough eggs to fill an in ground swimming pool.
I remember dressing up like ninjas to sneak into the superintendent of the city school's yard and hang cassette tape ribbon, harder to clean up that toilet paper, from the trees in his yard. The superintendent, we'll call him Smith, lived way out in the country in the middle of about a hundred acres of land most of which he rented out to farmers for pastureland. Well, we parked the car on the main road and walked a good mile, mile and a half, weaving our way between beef cattle as we went. It was me, "Big Al" and Jerry Holme, Eddie Davis and Clinton Hayes. We were able to sneak onto the property, up into the yard and do the deed with all the stealth and efficiency of a Navy SEALS unit. It was on the way back through the pastures that Eddie decided this would be a good time to try cow tipping as sort of a cherry on top of the night's festivities. The rest of us weren't interested but Eddie would not be denied so we left him there and went back to the cars.
Eddie had driven himself so we planned on meeting in town the next morning and innocently drive by Smith's house to admire the handy work. It wasn't until then that we learned of Eddie's adventure after we had left him. It seems that in the pitch black of a dark October evening that Eddie had accidentally tipped a bull who had alerted the Smith's with his bellows. When Super Smith turned on the outside flood lights he was greeted by the sight of his trees hanging thick with black cassette tape and Eddie Davis, still dressed like a ninja, clinging to the top of one like an angel on a Christmas tree. Eddie was outside of the pasture then, of course, and the bull had lost interest, but it still took the fire department's hook and ladder team and a Duke power van with a cherry picker to get him down and then he was told that he would be cleaning the tape out of the trees before he would be allowed to go home. We were sure to blow the horn and wave as we went past the next morning. Eddie sort of grimaced and told us that we were number one before the Sheriff's deputy who was in charge of overseeing his work tapped him on the shoulder with his nightstick to encourage him to pick up the pace.
Yep, ol' Eddie was always a cop magnet, but it was Big Al who got all of us put in the pokey even if it was just for an hour or two. It was Halloween again. It may have been the year after Eddie's running of the bulls or there may have been a year or two in between, I'm not sure, but it was Halloween and we were cruising the center of teenage activity in Asheboro, the Randolph Mall. We were in Jerry's car. It was one of those sixties-era Cadillacs, a black convertible mafia-mobile, that had fins. Jerry drove most of the time since he had the cool car and Big Al, being his older brother, had perpetual shotgun. Well, we had decided to take one more lap through the parking lot and head home when Al's head was turned by a pretty little redhead dressed as a belly dancer walking with this gaggle of girls down the sidewalk in front of JC Penny's. Now Big Al was never a ladies man. For that matter, neither were any of the rest of us, but he was the big goofy type that always seemed to get tongue-tied and come down with a case of the giggles every time a girl said so much as "you're standing on my foot" or "this is the ladies room, stupid." This time though Al was so stricken by this little red headed belly dancer that he rolled down the window, leaned half way out so that he could almost touch her, and asked what it would take for her to go out with him.
"Try some Slim Fast and a bar of soap, fat boy," she said, the barbs of her tongue cutting so quick that they went through Al and about sliced the tip of Jerry's nose off. "Use em both steady for about twenty years and then get back to me." Well, that last blow sat Al hard against the back of the seat and he sat there quiet for a few seconds while the rest of us tried to think of something to say. Clinton had just opened his mouth when Al told his brother to step on it.
"Get around there again quick. I'll show her a thing or two." Jerry gunned it and flew around the building until we had little red in sight as she walked up to the main entrance where a bunch of people were milling about, waiting for their rides and hanging out. "Watch this." Big Al said and climbed up onto the seat dropped his pants and stuck his butt out the window. It was at this time that in an instance of brotherly love Jerry gunned the motor and took a sharp left around some parked cars. The force sort of threw Al back and hemmed him in the window with his knees against his chest and his rear hanging out the window so far that it almost hit an Asheboro city cop in the side of the head. A roar went up in the crowd at the sight of Big Al's very large, lilly white derriere and people started spanking him and pinching his butt. To make matters worse, little red and her friends took out a tube of lipstick and started writing on Big Al's butt, drawing pictures and things. The whole time we were laughing too hard to help Al out. Jerry had grabbed one hand because he was afraid that he would go backwards through the window but that was all he could do, hang on and laugh. In the end, no pun intended, the cop that big Al's rear had almost taken out was nice enough to help him out of the window onto his feet so that he could pull his pants up. He also helped Jerry find a parking space for his car, then he helped us all into a police cruiser and gave us a nice scenic tour of town on our way to the police station.
Needless to say the fun had stopped here although I have to say that it started again when Al and Jerry's Mom and Grandfather came to pick them up. Their parents are divorced and they and their Mom moved in with her Dad to share the expenses and to take care of him who was pushing ninety at the time and deaf as a post. I'll never forget Mrs. Holme trying to explain it all to him in the police station waiting room.
"His what?"
"His bare butt!"
"What kind of bear?"
"No, his bare butt!" Mrs. Holme took this opportunity to turn and point to her own to illustrate.
"Oh bare butt! What about it?"
"He hung it out the car window!"
"Where?"
"The car window!" And so on. You get the picture. It was the perfect end to that year's Halloween. Well, it was perfect until my folks showed up.
Al learned later that little red had written her phone number with that lipstick across one cheek. Of course, the guy who told him that waited a couple of days until he had long washed it off, but the next time Al saw her he got it again, this time on a piece of paper. About five years later we had to ask Red if she thought back to the sight of Al's naked rear end hanging out in the mall parking lot when she agreed to married him. We never have got a clear answer on that.
I surf through the channels for a few minutes and have been given the choice of Nightmare on Elm Street 6, Billy the Kid Meets Dracula or Delaware Tech and Rhode Island State playing football I get my cigar lit and step out onto the steps again. There's a little Martian picking through the apples. There's no football helmet and tin foil here. This kid has an ankle length robe of some sort of shimmery material, platform boots with LED's flashing around the soles and a custom fitted mask complete with a fake brain that sitting in this clear plastic globe on top of his head.
"Where's your hand truck?" I ask. He just looks at me, grabs a yellow apple, bows at the waist and walks off across the yard. "Halloween sure has changed." I say to myself, but as I watch the little Martian go I notice that the trees in my front yard are hanging thick with toilet paper. I hear a car horn and look up as the mouth breather drives by. His buddy Lumpy has his bare butt hanging out the passenger side window. "Then again maybe not."
