ozma914: (Dorothy and the Wizard)
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Halloween Costumes for Fending Off the Cold

( Oct. 28th, 2023 06:49 pm)

          There’s probably no better timed holiday than Halloween. After all, it comes just before the two most frightening times on the calendar: Winter, and elections.

            It’s hardly surprising, then, that one popular Halloween mask is any famous politician. Some years ago I went out as a Senator, stopped all the other Trick-Or-Treaters, and collected 28% of their candy. The problem is, half the people don’t recognize political figures, and the other half get too scared.

So my criteria for choosing a costume: Warmth. It’s not unheard of here to have snow by the end of October. Any Hoosier parent will tell you the main task in designing their kid’s costume is incorporating a heavy coat and snow boots. Dressing as an astronaut is very popular.

            I stopped celebrating Halloween after realizing I can just go to the store, buy all the candy I want, turn off the porch light and eat it inside, in the warmth.

 

Yes, I know--but I already spent one Halloween in that outfit, and never got any candy.

 

No human can produce a Halloween more frightening than staring another Midwest winter in its frostbitten face. So those times when forced to go out for Halloween, I dressed as an Eskimo (These days I'd be an Inuit, or Yupik). Once, to mix it up, I went as that kid Kenny from South Park, even though it killed me. He dresses as an Eskimo. I still wasn't warm – an entire calendar worth of Playmates of the Year couldn’t warm me up in autumn or winter –  but at least I tried.

My wife loves Halloween--it’s one of her few faults. She refused to marry me until I agreed to go annually to my brother’s Halloween parties, which were sadly held outside. Usually I hovered near his wood burning stove in the garage, especially after Emily decided I'd used up my Eskimo turns and had to try something new.

One year we went as zombies. We attended the Zombie Walk in Kendallville, shuffled  to a cemetery for a photo op, and then, just for fun, walked into a grocery store and demanded bran. The clerk said, “Last year you were way scarier as Dick Cheney”.

 


 

 

We tried to do costumes on the cheap, because I’m cheap. That gave me two possibilities, both wearable with insulted long underwear:

My adopted brother Martin gave me bags of hand-me-down clothes. Being that I’m a small town white person and he’s a black guy from Fort Wayne (which is big city by my standards), we didn’t have the same fashion sense, but see above about me being cheap.

Anyway, I found a couple of items that I’m fairly sure he threw in just to mess with me. One was a uniquely loud puffy shirt, the other a pair of oversized parachute pants that buttoned all the way down the side. I refuse to believe he ever wore these things in public.

I could go to Halloween as a stereotypical 70’s disco black guy, or as a clown. While I’ll never be politically correct, we all know I’m not brave/dumb enough to tackle the former.

The second choice was something my mother bought for me, back when she (correctly) thought I needed to get fit. It was designed to hold in body heat and moisture while you exercise, apparently under the assumption that you’ll sweat yourself healthy. It’s like a portable sauna. I used it once on the treadmill, and lost twelve pounds in thirty minutes. That day I could have gone trick-or-treating as a zombie without needing any makeup, assuming I could walk in a straight line, which I couldn’t.

It was basically an all silver track suit, neck to toe. A little silver makeup, aluminum foil hat, and – tah-dah! The Tin Woodman. Or a space alien.

https://www.comicbookreligion.com/img/t/i/Tin_Woodman.jpg
Look out! Space alien!

 

 

That's what I'll choose if I ever go again: Any candy I ate would sweat out of me by the time I made it home. Plus, anything that reflects that much body heat back is bound to keep me warm, no matter how cold it gets outside. Since my one and only goal from October through March is staying warm, I could celebrate Halloween for months … even if the upcoming political campaign leaves me cold.

And if that doesn’t work, the Eskimo costume is standing by.

 

 

 

Remember, everyone who doesn't read is risking a visit from Edgar Allan Poe.

 

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ozma914: mustache Firefly (mustache)
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Halloween Was More Fun In The Dangerous Days

( Oct. 30th, 2021 06:38 pm)

 Unless you’re one of those people of questionable sanity who likes cold weather, October has little to offer Hoosiers except autumn colors and Halloween. By the end of the month the leaves have started to fall and the days are criminally short. This gives me a feeling of bleakness and dread that …

Come to think of it, bleakness and dread are very Halloweenie.
But no matter how you feel about the weather (it stinks), Halloween is the beginning of snack season. Through Thanksgiving and Christmas and on to Valentine’s Day, we get to pack on a nice layer of fat against the cold.
It doesn’t really help. But what the heck, any excuse for chocolate.

These days I’m expected to turn on my porch light and give candy to other people, but I’d rather hide in the dark and let the dog scare off anyone who approaches. There’s a cocoa shortage, people—chocolate charity begins at home.
But when I was younger, Halloween was one of the highlights of the year. In elementary school we’d spend October making decorations of ghosts, witches, and of course pumpkins with scary faces.
I wonder if that’s allowed, these days? They’ve probably banned that kind of stuff from public schools, along with cardboard pilgrims and anything Christmas. I liked the pilgrims, although even then I knew they’d be toast without Squanto and his corn crop. Not that they had any toast.

I'm not saying Emily and I haven't occasionally had fun with Halloween. Or was this taken at the end of our last camping trip?


Where was I? Oh yeah—candy. My family didn’t exactly hand out candy like candy. Back then treats were, well, a treat. But on one glorious night we could collect enough to keep us going until Thanksgiving.
It wasn’t seen as a dangerous holiday, at the time. (This would be in the 70s. No, wait. Let’s change that to the 80s. Yeah, the 80s.) On the contrary, this was the night when it was quite literally okay to take candy from strangers.
Our dad would load us into the back of his El Camino for a trip to the store, where we would find highly flammable costumes and masks that rendered us mostly blind, then—
Oh, the El Camino? Well, it’s kind of a half car, half pickup truck. We didn’t worry about belting into the too-small front, because there were no seat belts.
Anyway, we waited until it got pitch dark and then hit the streets, methodically knocking on every door. Sometimes we’d get apples, which was not exactly a jump for joy moment. Packaged candy was okay, but the really nice people would make things from scratch, like those wonderful popcorn balls or caramel apples—which beat plain apples hands down.
The only glitch I remember is when we reached the home of a deaf old fellow who had no idea it was Halloween. He was probably the guy who later invented the idea of only trick or treating at homes with porch lights on. Or, maybe he was hoarding his chocolate.

Wait ... I'm now the old guy.

Just as our parents passed out the last of their candy, we got home with more candy. It was important to eat the homemade stuff, like caramel apples and popcorn balls, first. If you weren’t too much of a glutton, you could string the rest along for weeks.
The times were so much less dangerous.

Some of you might be horrified by this. Some might smile at the exaggeration, then be horrified to discover it wasn’t an exaggeration: That’s the way it happened for some of us in the small towns of the mid-70s—I mean, 80s. This was a time when, if we did something stupid like walk in the middle of the street, our parents would get three phone calls and be standing at the front door by the time we made it home. When everyone knows everyone else, it’s not as dangerous as it sounds on paper.
We did know about the dangers, as shown in the very first short story I ever had published, in the late … 80s. It was about a hungry vampire who drinks his own blood after biting down on a razor blade inside a Halloween apple. If anyone still has that old copy of the Central Noble High School Cat Tracks, you’ll find the story to be very, very bad.
Just the same, the worst thing we ever experienced was a tummy ache.

Remember: Every time you buy a book, a ghost gets his wings rest.

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ozma914: (Dorothy and the Wizard)
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The heat is on

( Oct. 26th, 2017 11:37 pm)

My furnace started again this year! Not only did it not explode, but I didn’t even have to order a part or call for help, The way this year has gone, nobody’s more surprised than I am.

Then there was what happened the next day, but, well ... we'll talk about that later. For now, let me bask.
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ozma914: cover of our new humor book (Hoosier Hysterical)
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College in autumn

( Oct. 21st, 2016 06:09 pm)
This photo is actually from a few years ago when Emily was still in school, but Indiana University-Purdue University has been in the news lately (not necessarily in a good way). The time of year is about right! This is the Liberal Arts Building, if my rusty memory serves.
 
I really loved being down at IPFW, which is easy for me to say because it was Emily who had to actually pass the classes. I'd find a nice spot and write, and there were lots of nice spots. I wrote several columns and the majority of two books—maybe three—while she was in school. For a writer, there's something to be said for leaving behind the distractions and errands of home.
 
Plus, the library was awesome.
 
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