Boo! Did I scare you? Wow! So many houses in Elmhurst really dress up their yards for the spooky season of Halloween. Whoever is selling those 10 foot skeletons for front yard displays are making a fortune! For the past few years those bony structures and larger than life inflatables have been decorating hundreds of yards in town. There’s one family in town that posts up giant spiders on the front of their large white home and it looks really cool.
Back in my younger days, it was just a carved pumpkin or two on the front porch and that was it for Halloween decorations. While not really into the dress up the yard or myself for Halloween bit, seeing all this décor and preparations brings back loads of memories from the past. Here are some of them.
When I was 9, my grandma sewed me a Dracula cape of black velvet with red satin on the inside which served me for eight Halloweens. My mom had to lengthen the cape as I grew taller.
MY VAMPIRE CAPE LOOKED MUCH LIKE THIS GUY’S. BUT I WORE NICE BLACK SLACKS BECAUSE DRACULA WAS A GOOD DRESSER!
Trick or treating would take place right after school until 9 p.m. I don’t recall many parents going out with their kids. Moms and dads were always at home dishing out treats while older brothers and sisters looked after the younger candy hunters. Throughout the late afternoon and into the night, my sister Marianne and I would fill up two pillow cases apiece with treats each. Bowls of sweets were in our house for many days after.
From age 14 thru 16 I helped work the haunted house at Lincoln School when they held their annual Halloween carnival. Scaring the wits out of kids and adults was a guilty pleasure for me. Back then, every school in town would hold similar night time carnivals for their students and the parents.
SCHOOL HALLOWEEN CARNIVALS LOOKED MUCH LIKE THIS ONE BACK IN THE DAY.
Freshman year in college me, Will Costello and his sisters Patty and Jeanne drove 6 hours to join Will’s brother Terry and other friends at Southern Illinois University’s wild Halloween party. Downtown Carbondale was a bedlam of drunkenness and substance abuse. It was like the last days of Caligula down there! As the years went on, the Halloween insanity at S.I.U. had to be shut down for safety’s sake.
THE PARTYING ON HALLOWEEN IN DOWNTOWN CARBONDALE WAS PRETTY NUTTY.
When in my early twenties I joined pals twice for Halloween pub crawls in Chicago’s Division Street bar district. The drinking started around noon and went on all night. The first of those sojourns saw a cute gal dressed as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark corner me off a dance floor and attack me for some serious fang to mouth action. The next time I did that crawl, the girl I was dating at the time got so drunk she barfed in a plastic bag in my car as I drove her home.
REMEMBERING THE ELVIRA DRESSED HOTTIE WHO ATTACKED ME AT A DIVISION STREET BAR. GOOD TIMES. AND I SURVIVED!
During my radio days, the best Halloween fun happened when I was producing at WCKG FM. Our station’s marketing people hired TV’s Batman and Robin (Adam West and Burt Ward) to spend the day with us. They did a long visit with The Miller & Howell Morning Show) where I learned Adam West’s favorite Catwoman was Julie Newmar. That night they were the special guests of a massive costume party WCKG hosted in the Navy Pier Ballroom. My favorite memory of that was seeing our six foot four newsman Steve Scott strolling through the party in his full sized Alf costume.
NEWSMAN STEVE SCOTT SPORTED A LIFESIZE ALF COSTUME LIKE THIS ONE.
Several times when I worked at US*99, a morning show sponsor gifted us with large boxes of candy. I was the hero of my neighborhood handing out full sized Hershey bars and other sweet goodies.
Since then, my Halloween happenings have been limited to handing out treats to the kiddos who ring my doorbell. The costumes sold today are so much more varied, imaginative and authentic than when I was little. The accompanying parents sometimes dress up too, as they escort their youngsters from door to door. It’s all good fun, just so long as the weather is agreeable. Oh, and also that I don’t run out of treats before the end of the night.
JERRY SEINFELD WITH A VINTAGE BIT ON TRICK OR TREATING.
NEXT BLOG- Remembering my dear sister Maryanne.