October Freakin 25th October 25th 2023

  I knew about the snow.  Although I joke all the time about how often the Meteorologist is wrong and gets to keep a job,  he/she seldom misses on bad news.  So I got out and put my tombstones in the ground.  They are styrofoam tombstones that come with little two inch plastic holders you stick in the ground.  That doesn't work.    I don't know how others do it,  but I use gorilla tape and staples to attach a wooden stake to the back of each tombstone  and hammer it into the ground.    I got it done prior to the snow.  And although I have few decorations that are all starting to show their age,  I want some kind of decorations out.  Cause I really like Halloween....... A LOT!   

  Halloween in kiddom was like the second most wonderful day of the year.    Candy was indeed a huge part of it.  It remains very hard for me NOT to get into it.  We buy it as close to Halloween as possible or we will buy it several times.  But for me these days, Halloween is totally about nostalgia.  Those wonderful memories of that most exciting day/evening of the year.  

  My Halloween's were most innocent.   I never was nor will I ever be a horror movie freak.  I don't like being scared.   I am a Munsters, Adams Family, Disney Halloween movie type a guy.  I loved the idea of spooky far more the actual spooky.   Come to Halloween I am sure my memories are much better than life actually was way back then.   I can only seem to remember perfect weather when we all know what can happen here in this corner of my home and native land.   While I was always in trouble in school,  I can't see things not being worse after all the candy I would have consumed in a one or two hour period before bed.   

  As I have related many many times before,  My home town was brand new.  In the days before family planning the town was bursting with kids.   In the days before daylight savings time, Halloween's darkness came early,  and yet the two or three hours from the end of the school day to the time we were allowed to set out on our candy quest almost rivalled Christmas eve in longest hours.  I remember mom trying to make us eat supper.   We sat at the table for what seemed an impossible length of time.   All it took to make my escape from that table of torture was the first "HALLOWEEN APPLES " call at the front door.  

   In this day and age,  risqué is something so completely different that it once was.  My mother,  who may have been the worst singer in the world was known near and far for her risqué Halloween song.  I think it was her own composition cause I never ever heard it anywhere else,  except in our house in late October.

HALLOWEEN, the custerteen

Three little witches on the green

One with a fiddle

One with a plumb

One with a pancake stuck to her bum.

I still sing it every year.  I don't know if my kids sing it to my grandchildren.  Can't blame them if they don't, but I will admit that sometimes the best traditions passed on are the dumbest things an outsider ever heard.   Another favourite came from music class in elementary school.   Music class in those days usually consisted of us singing along to educational records.    

HALLOWEEN is coming when we'll be

Dressed in funny clothes and then we'll see

Pumkins in the window shining bright

Oh we'll have a good time HALLOWEEN NIGHT.  

Not exactly Lennon/McCartney is it?  Ah but still,  it may be my Halloween anthem.  

 I was never one for being destructive Halloween night.  I never egged anything or anyone.  Well not until I was a policeman anyway.  I didn't soap windows, or tip over garbage cans.  I so wanted to.   It was Halloween and I so wanted to be bad.  But I was pretty cowardly come to facing authorities and the wrath of my dad.  ( If you knew my dad you would think it funny.  Wrath and my dad in the same sentence?  Well one of those things is not like the other).  A better descriptor would be fear of disappointment.  And I certainly didn't need Halloween to do that.  But I digress:  While I didn't partake in such trickery,  I certainly didn't mind walking the walk in my early teens..... But as they say, paybacks a b*&ch.

  When I signed up with the R.C.M.P. ,  I discovered what Halloween was in small town Saskatchewan.  Holy Mackerel!  There was nothing,  and I mean nothing that didn't get drug out on the road making it impossible for vehicles to get around.  There were packs of kids roaming everywhere, and every time I drove by in my police car several eggs came from the middle of the pack and splattered everywhere.

  My first few times I actually tried to open the streets,  but as I got to one end I could see the little buggers at the far end of the street hauling everything back out.  I once stopped to question the mob as to who threw the eggs at the police car.  You can imagine how that turned out.  It was exhausting, Halloween night in places like Pelly, Outlook, and Humboldt.   And I loved it so much.  On a couple of occasions,  we seized eggs from kids and set up traps for other cops.   The highway patrol guys got it something awful on a couple of hallowed evenings.    Things took a slowdown in Humboldt,  as we had a couple of terribly tragic halloween events associated with the evenings shenanigans.  The rest of my days in uniform,  things were different.  Less tomfoolery, less damage.  I had eleven years service before I didn't work a Halloween night.   

  For a time or two,  Carol and I dressed up to hand out candy.  Our kids handled halloween very differently.   Our youngest would hit the streets and get home first.  He pretty much ate everything he collected and got violently ill.  To this day, and well into his forties, he still feels a queeze come over him Halloween night.   Our middle one tried his best to fill a pillowcase full of candy.  He loved collecting it.  Mom and I stole what we could, as he had little or no interest in sweets.  By Christmas, all the good stuff was gone and the remainder was tossed.  

 These days,  We look so forward to the hundred to hundred fifty locals who show up at our house.  Halloween these days seems to be a family thing and entire families roam the neighbourhood.  It is about as pleasant an evening as one could ever imagine.  Our policy is that if you turn up at our house,  you will get a treat.  Don't care if you're eight or eighteen.  Don't care if you have a great costume or not.  And if there is any left at the end of the night? Well the stragglers do very well.  

  Little one's costumes will be covered in snow suits this year.  The open door will mean the furnace won't stop running all night.  But the kids will show up cause that's what they do.  Parents will escort the little ones up to the door with proud as punch grins from ear to ear.   I will prepare for the evening all day carving pumpkins.   I really do love Halloween.  Even when it is -19 with six inches of snow on October Freakin 25th!