Mr. Fuddy-duddy Longs for Yesteryear’s Halloween

   By Tom Anselm

Like most holidays in our post-modern society, Halloween has become very complicated. There are elaborate and ghoulish haunted houses, Six Flags Fright Fest, full blown retail-outlets with aisle upon aisle of spooky paraphernalia and every conceivable costume known to man and zombies. And the gruesomeness-meter hits ‘tilt’ in every neighborhood with a yard display that makes “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” look like “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” And so at the risk of sounding like Mr. Fuddy-duddy, I gotta say this just ain’t right.

Back in my day (how’s that for a ‘fuddyduddyism’?), things were a whole lot simpler.   Our costumes consisted of what we could find in good old mom and dad’s old clothes drawer. I lost track of how many times I went as a ‘bum’, wearing a baggy flannel shirt tied at the waist, a beat-up fedora from my grandpa, sporting a burnt-cork beard, and hauling a pillowcase to handle all the candy I was bound to haul in.   Total cost… nothin’. It wasn’t so much how clever your get-up was. The major goal was to do anything you could to score great gobs of sugared goo.

We would wander the Hills of Bissell for

hours, from my house to Bellefontaine Road over to Chambers and home again. We never went in for the car-window-soaping or house-egging sort of schtick. We were good little bums. Then we’d stagger through the front door and dump our booty on the living room floor, competing with my brother to see who got the most Snickers and Hershey’s Almond bars. (Full size, no less; none of this mini-stuff then.)

Now let’s talk a bit about candy. You could

keep the Milky Way… too, well, milky. The Clark bar had an identity crisis…Same with Butterfinger. Baby Ruth…nothing more than Snicker’s lumpy cousin. Three Musketeers… glorified Milky Way. Pay Day looked like something you could find under the front seat of your car, like a hunk of goo happened to roll around and pick up a few peanuts. (However, I have grown to love them in my old age. Low carbs, protein…healthy snack, right?) The Zero bar…not a chance, and aptly named. M&M’s were okay, but nothing special. Zagnut, Chunky… not in the same class as the others. Now Heath bars… there is a good use

of a mystery-middle covered in chocolate. Eat those with a Coke… mmmm, baby. And you can keep Skittles, Smarties, Blow Pops… wasted effort and wholly unsatisfying, if you ask me.

And we always had to have a joke. Now, I

hear from others that this is a tradition peculiar to our town. Our Chicago-born grandkids never had to work for their free sweets. Over the years I have told and heard hundreds of great ones, but a few stand out here. “Why was the Skeleton lonely? He didn’t have nobody… (no Body!). What is a vampire’s favorite holiday? Fangs-giving. What is a ghost’s favorite Italian food? Boo-sghetti. And a new one this year… Why can Peter Pan fly forever?…‘Cause he comes from Never Land!

But I fear today’s Halloween has been

preempted by young adults. Candy has been replaced with pumpkin-flavored adult beverages, a couple of jack-o-lanterns on the front porch with Hollywood horror flick sets. I warned you I was Mr. Fuddy-duddy today. But I will confess that Katie and her nutty husband Brett did host some pretty kickin’ parties when they were first married. However, as often happens, parenthood has brought them to their senses. Still, I long for the days when we taught the virtues of gluttony and greed amidst the simplicity of kids in homemade outfits, pillow cases in hand, having to perform stand-up comedy for the right to eat themselves silly and puke up their winnings on the lime-green bedroom carpet.

And yeah, one of our male progeny accomplished that awesome feat. Oh, bring back the good old days.

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