As usual, there were only a smattering of kids trick or treating in our leafy North Baltimore neighborhood last Friday night, a trend that’s become more pronounced in the past dozen years. Beats me. This year, my wife (who fastened a skeleton on the front door and donned a benign witch get-up in the mid-aughts) asked, “Should we even bother with candy this year?” I replied in the affirmative, suggesting we lay in 15 full-sized Hershey Bars just in case there was an uptick in revelers; six showed up.
I also noticed in the last two weeks of October, while walking our dog Billy in the morning, that there was just four houses out of the 40 or so that we pass on the way to Sherwood Gardens that even had a bare-bones autumn gourds—or jack-o-lantern—display. I like decorations and have previously written that people in the country might be less grumpy if Christmas lights and inflatable, extra-fat Santas, and reindeer were left up all year-round. I’m told that’s tacky, but in this modern world what isn’t tacky?
Not that I escaped some pre-Halloween crankiness when Billy and I went out into the semi-wild. It changed fast: one day, an older guy (probably about my age) was fussing over our Yorkie, taking his paw and exclaiming, “What energy and strong vibrations your pup has!” We chatted for a few minutes—I cast off the New Age cant—and went our separate ways, both smiling. The very next day, a middle-aged woman with a jaunty Labrador yelled at me after the dogs barked at each other. “You know, like you should really change your direction, like it’s not fair to my dog!” I countered, without the rancor it deserved, that maybe she should change directions if it was so bothersome. It was in the air.
The next day, spying a mammoth German Shepherd ahead, I took Billy around a few cars to avoid the dog and his young master, a nasty piece of work who’d just stopped on the sidewalk to stare at his phone, probably some rude porn on TikTok. But that wasn’t enough, as the dogs barked at each other, and Mr. Phone yelled at me, “Take that mutt on a different route!” Hackles up, I loudly rejoined, “I wasn’t aware that you owned the fucking sidewalk, asshole!” I shouldn’t bait such marauders, it’s not worth potential physical trouble—which I don’t need since even carting the garbage cans to our curb each Monday evening can result in a neck cramp—but I was pissed. And unsatisfied, since the guy had re-jiggered his headset and was dead to outside sounds.
If you believe The New York Times, which ran a story on Oct. 29th headlined, “Have Halloween Decorations Become Too Scary,” it’s not so calm… in Brooklyn, where a mother was distressed by a display in Ditmas Park that featured “a ton of blood” and a “dismembered head.” Reporter Alyson Krueger let her readers in on the secret that “Being a little spooked is part of the delight of Halloween,” and then on to social commentary. “It has caused neighbors to lodge complaints, and others to wonder about the twisted impulses that may be lurking in the collective American psyche.”
She added: “Halloween has also become a bigger spending holiday—according to the National Retail Federation, spending on decorations alone is expected to reach $4.2 billion this year [a better haul than the dreadful Springsteen biopic!], up from $1.6 billion in 2019—and a more adult one.” I’ve no basis to dispute those numbers, but Halloween, starting in the mid-1980s, was popular among adults. I remember talking about it with a bunch of colleagues at Milano’s on Houston St. in Lower Manhattan, and six of the seven there affirmed that “Halloween is my favorite national holiday.”
I couldn’t comprehend that back then and can’t today. I did go to some parties on Halloween in college (the most memorable was having a lightning bolt painted on my face in 1975, with the blessing of Mr. Natural) and one or two later in New York. My enthusiasm was muted, kind of like New Year’s Eve, which I never cared for.
The above picture, snapped on Halloween (when it was just for kids), shows my brother Doug and cousins Jerry and Chuck Duncan. Judging by the looks on their faces, they must’ve received raisins or oatmeal cookies at the last house they visited. I’m certain (although I wasn’t born yet, and all three are deceased) they persevered and brought home a haul.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: the Detroit Lions defeat the Cleveland Browns in the NFL Championship; Harry Heilmann was elected to MLB’s Hall of Fame; Sugar Ray Robinson was knocked out for the first and last time; Julius Boros wins golf’s U.S. Open; compulsory Identity Cards are abolished in the UK; England explodes its first nuclear bomb in the Monte Bello Islands of Australia; Kitty Wells is the first woman to have a Number 1 hit on the country charts (“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”); Robin Quivers is born and Curly Howard dies; Bernard Malamud’s The Natural and Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood are published; and Herman Wouk wins the Fiction Pulitzer Prize.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
