Today in Halloween: More creepy trick-or-treaters

No, nothing creepy about that picture at all.

As part of our continuing series of snapshots – many of them vintage – of old Halloween costumes and trick-or-treaters, we present this picture, undated but certainly from the mid 1900s or earlier.

Maybe it’s the lack of costumes other than the masks.

Maybe it’s the pose, the body language that says, “Please, father, would you finish taking the picture?”

That or, “When you wake up in the middle of the night we’re going to be standing by your bed wearing these masks.”

Or maybe it’s just the ears on the little boy.

 

Today in Halloween: Good candy and bad candy

During the Halloween season, I’m looking at some of the things that make Halloween … Halloween.

There’s a pecking order in the world of Halloween candy. At least there is in my household.

Hard, relatively flavorless candy like Tootsie Rolls and Bit-O-Honey rank very low on the list, just above the kind of generic candy that people can buy in bulk at discount stores.

Really, has any kid in the past 30 years been excited by the prospect of getting a Tootsie Roll tossed in their bag?

The middle-ground is held by a variety of treats, including some that don’t really get distributed much anymore. when I was a kid, people made popcorn balls and handed them out to trick-or-treaters. But many parents discourage consumption of homemade treats these days, so popcorn balls have faded in popularity. A few years ago I discovered that some company actually made and wrapped popcorn balls for Halloween distribution.

The best case scenario – realistically speaking – for trick-or-treaters is probably the “fun size” versions of popular candy like Twix and Snickers. They’re recognizable candies and actually welcome in a treat bag – and on the kitchen table back at home.

The top of the line, given out only by only some households in some neighborhood, is the stuff of legend: Full-size candy bars.

Each year I tease my wife that we’re going to take any trick-or-treaters we’re responsible for to the ritziest neighborhood around, where legend has it they give out the full-size bars. I’m not sure that such a practice actually exists because she always pooh-poohs the idea.

But a lifelong appreciator of trick-or-treating can dream, can’t he?

iPhoneography: Halloween at the dollar store

It’s hard to believe we’re about a month out from our favorite holiday. So it’s a good time to take a look at some iPhone photos of Halloween stuff.

This time: Halloween at the dollar store. Because of the “everything for a dollar” pricing of dollar stores, Halloween masks, costumes, accessories and decor are decidedly more limited. But what these items lack in scope they more than make up for in creativity.

Take the product above for example. Body parts! And they’re artificially flavored. Uh … thank you?

Halloween and superheroes go together. And now you can buy candy cigarettes just like Superman and Batman smoke. Although I believe the candy cigarettes like Shaggy smokes are only available from specially licensed sellers.

How about these Boogers? They’re tangy!

And the box tells us the flavors! Mmmm … Snottermelon!

Okay, if you’ve had enough candy, how about some decor? I really rather like these little perched figures.

Last but not least, a staple of Halloween items at the dollar store, the bloody cloth. Although if you spend enough time digging for Halloween boogers, you can probably produce your own bloody cloth.

‘Til next time!

iPhoneography: Fall is here

Yes, yes, I know that fall officially arrived more than a month ago, and we’ve had enough cool temperatures in Indiana to warrant switching on the furnace.

But there’s something about November that really reinforces the idea: It’s fall.

With Halloween over and the holiday season rushing toward us like an oncoming train, maybe there’s time to take a breath and contemplate the change of seasons.

These photos were taken with my iPhone in my neighborhood in recent days.

This green leaf — hanging precariously on a gate above a pile of leaves waiting to be raked — sums up how I feel about fall sometimes. I see it coming but I hate to give in because of what follows.

Most have given in already.

Fall’s colors are beautiful.

Just a few months ago, this little ditch was teaming with wildlife. This morning it’s frosty.

A nice spot for watching the change of seasons.

Enjoy fall!

Halloween horror: ‘Walking Dead’ rocks, ‘Simpsons’ sucks

Here we are, on the eve of Halloween, and various movie channels are having marathons, ranging from the classics on TCM to later, lesser “Halloween” movies on AMC.

Into the mix comes the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” on AMC and the latest installment of “Treehouse of Horror” on “The Simpsons” on Fox.

First, let’s make short work of “The Simpsons.”

After being a zealous fan of the show for its first 10 seasons or so — we just re-watched “Mr. Plow” on DVD the other week — I fell out of love with “The Simpsons.” A dozen years ago, the show seemed to lose most of its creative edge. Maybe you really can’t do 500 episodes of a TV series and expect it to continue to be good. Duh.

Tonight’s “Treehouse of Horror,” the show’s annual Halloween special, had a couple of funny moments but overall was pretty lame. Judging by tonight’s episode, the show has traded pointed, harsh humor and wonderful characters for cheap and crude laughs. When a joke revolves around the similarity of the words tentacles and testicles, you know the show is spinning its wheels.

On the other hand, “The Walking Dead” continues to feature some of the most gripping — as in gripping the arms of my chair — suspense on TV.

As the survivors of a zombie apocalypse take refuge on a remote farm, where their injured are treated by the kindly resident veterinarian, tensions external and internal build. Watching Shane, the conflicted deputy, make a stomach-rolling choice tonight made me wonder where the producers are going with the character.

The show is, of course, all about characters and choices. Tonight’s episode saw some discussion of a point that I’ve been expecting for a while now: What if your reaction to the end of the world was not to fight to survive, but to opt out?

If characters are considering putting themselves out of their misery on “The Walking Dead,” might it be too much to hope that Fox would consider euthanasia for “The Simpsons?”

Again, duh. After wrangling over salaries, the talented vocal actors on the show recently signed for two more seasons. There’s simply too much money to be made for Fox to consider leaving any on the table.

Trick-or-treating, Charlie Brown style

“I got a rock.”

Charlie Brown’s lament — from the classic 1966 TV show “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” — has, for the past 40-some years, echoed in my head every Oct. 31.

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday, although it gets short shrift some years when such grown-up concerns as work prompts my family to push jack-o-lantern carving back to the night itself.

Then there was the year of my ill-advised suggestion that the family travel to a neighborhood on the other side of town to see what was reported to be an especially elaborate Halloween yard display. Of course, everyone else in town had that same idea and the resulting traffic jam on neighborhood streets meant that we almost — almost — didn’t get back to our own neighborhood in time for trick-or-treating.

But stressful Halloween memories are, thankfully, few for me.

I’ve enjoyed two great periods of Halloween in my life. In recent years, the chance to take my son trick-or-treating marks one of the highlights of the fall for me. Him too, I hope.

And of course, there’s the good old days. Halloween classic.

Growing up on a farm in a rural area, I never got to go trick-or-treating in my own neighborhood. Houses were few and far between and neighbors were so unaccustomed to having trick-or-treaters that you’d be better off expecting to find treats in our chicken coop.

But because my cousin Mary lived in the city, my family usually went to her house on Halloween and from there the kids went trick-or-treating.

Back then, in the 1960s, we went trick-or-treating for more than one night. Some people don’t believe me when I tell them this. Some people think we were deluding ourselves and were actually “shaking down” my cousin’s neighbors for candy several days in a row.

I’m sure that’s not true. Pretty sure.

Ahem.

Anyway. My cousin and I and several friends would set out at dark, costumes on and bags in hand, and it seemed like we ranged all over the south side of Muncie. I’ve previously noted in this blog the problems with wearing a mask over glasses. The glasses tended to fog up and reduce visibility. Being out at night, roaming over city blocks illuminated only by porch lights, made it even harder to see. My costume one particular year consisted of a painted-on beard, goofy hat and paint-spattered shirt. It was pretty low-rent but at least I could see.

As gratifying as the treats were, the tricks were just as good. One year, as our group approached a front porch, the resident of the house pulled a rope and caused a dummy to fall from a tree near us. As we shrieked and ran away from the house, other people, wearing masks and lying in wait, chased us.

We ran wildly into the street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a passing car.

Good times.

Now when I go along as my son trick-or-treats, I get to enjoy the gruesome costumes on the older kids and the awfully cute ones on the little folks. I remind my son to say “trick or treat” and “thank you.” I carry a flashlight to help motorists see us.

It all seems pretty tame compared to my youth, when it seemed as if we roamed and pillaged across a wide swath of the city for the better part of the week.

But, you know, it’s still trick or treating and there’s not much better than that.

It’s Sammy Terry time

Two weeks from tonight is Halloween. It’s a night for tricks and treats, as they said on the old “Peanuts” special, and it’s Sammy Terry’s night.

With just two weeks to go, I was afraid time would get away from me and I wouldn’t write about the Indianapolis TV horror movie host before it was too late. So here are my Sammy memories, a little early.

I’ve talked to Sammy in phone interviews a few times and met him once. It was the mid-1980s and I did a story about Sammy for the newspaper. I spoke with Bob Carter, Sammy’s mild-mannered, music-store-owning alter ego, over the phone in advance of an appearance at Muncie Mall and then met him when he was putting on his makeup at the mall before going on stage.

An earlier interview with Sammy remains one of my most nightmarish newspaper experiences. I wasn’t working full-time at the paper yet so I went to the office to make the long-distance call — remember those? — and took along a tape recorder and suction-cup-type recording device to attach to the phone.

I had used it before but this time something — the way I connected it to the phone, the florescent lights — fouled up the recording. I didn’t know until after I ended the conversation, of course, and was panicked when I couldn’t hear anything but a low hum on the tape when I tried to listen to it.

I wondered for a moment about calling Sammy back, but I decided not to. Instead, I sat down and furiously scribbled notes of everything I could remember from the interview. The resulting article was pretty lackluster and had virtually no quotes.

The later interview, before his Muncie appearance, went much more smoothly. Nothing notable, really, but Carter — who spoke in normal tones but whose voice was instantly recognizable as the TV ghoul who had presented classic monster movies and scared a couple of generations of  Central Indiana kids to death — was friendly and modest.

By the 1980s, Carter had a lot of great stories. He claimed to have invented the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger lickin’ good” during a live commercial, and who’s to say he did not? He talked about how the company that donated the casket from which he rose at the start of each show IN NO WAY wanted to be identified or credited because of potential complaints from the families of customers.

Carter was a pro long before this point, having done the show on WTTV Channel 4 since the early 1960s. He was gracious to a young journalist who was also a fan.

When my friends Jim and Derek and I went to meet him at Muncie Mall, he let us come into a back room while he applied his makeup and even posed for a picture right before going on stage at center court, where he delighted a lot of parents and kids — and probably scared a few too.

These days, Carter’s son is appearing as Sammy Terry. The younger version was in Muncie back in September and is probably making a few bucks — and making a lot of people smile.

More power to him. And more power to the original.

Pleasant nightmares, Sammy.

My worst Halloween memory

More than 40 years later, I remember the trauma if not the details: When we were elementary school kids at Cowan in the 1960s, we were allowed to wear our Halloween costume to school for that most wonderful of kid holidays.

Most of my memories of Halloween are happy ones: Trick-or-treating with my cousin Mary and friends in her neighborhood, showing off our costumes and collecting great treats.

One year  at Cowan, we got to put on a Halloween costume parade for the entire school.

What a treat … or so it seemed at first.

The teachers lined us all up, in our costumes, and led us through the school. Since all 12 grades were in two big buildings, we got to show off for everybody, even kids as old as high schoolers.

The damn, damn high schoolers.

I don’t remember what my costume was this particular year. But it was  a typical 1960s-era costume like those made by Ben Cooper or Collegeville: A hard plastic mask, secured to my head with an elastic band, and a cheap plastic tunic. If it was an Aquaman or Spock or any number of other similar costumes, the tunic, as you can see from the photos here, was anything but subtle. Instead of being an accurate recreation of the character’s costume from comic books or TV, it was emblazoned with the character’s name in big, dorky letters.

I loved it.

Well, the mask left something to be desired, but I ran into the same problems with every Halloween mask. I was a kid who had worn glasses since the middle of first grade, and masks didn’t work out very well. The masks got warm and my glasses fogged up and I tended to walk into things.

But that year, the parade was going pretty well. I could still see through my glasses as well as the narrow eye slits of whatever the heck costume I was wearing.

I could see well enough, in fact, to notice — too late to do anything about it — one of the high schoolers reach out and pull my mask off my face as I walked past his classroom desk.

He pulled the mask out far enough, of course, that the crappy elastic band broke and my mask came off.

I’m pretty sure I completed the rest of the Halloween parade with my now-useless mask in my hand. I say I’m pretty sure that was the case because I don’t really remember it. The final part of the parade was a blur of tears and frustration.

There’s no final twist, ala Rod Serling, to the story. It didn’t turn out that the offending high schooler was my big brother or anything. I never knew his name. I can still kind of see his laughing face as he pulled my mask off.

I wish I could say that when I became a teenager I found the now-grownup miscreant and soaped his windows. That didn’t happen, though.

If anybody reading this was a high-schooler at Cowan in the 1960s and remembers ripping the mask off a little dork with glasses, I have just just two things to say to you:

Do you remember what my costume was? Because I can’t for the life of me.

And what nursing home do you live in now? Because I just might come by and put a kink in your IV drip.

iPhoneography: Latest Halloween pics

You know the drill by now. I check out Halloween stores for masks, costumes and spooky decorations. I take pictures with my iPhone. I post them here.

We’re still about three weeks out from Halloween, but I’ve explored most of the Halloween stores in these parts.

Anybody else remember those Don Post Studios ads in Famous Monsters and other old monster magazines? The masks were head and shoulders — no pun intended — above the beloved but cheesy Collegeville and Ben Cooper costumes most kids wore.

Here’s a Don Post vampire mask:

Each year some of the most popular masks are those depicting political figures. There are a couple of really good ones among these, but what’s the deal with Hilary Clinton near the upper right corner? Her face is so red it looks like she’s going to explode.

Personally, I think the Bill Clinton mask is great. And look at the nose on Nixon, down on the bottom row. Nice.

Costumes for kids are fascinating to me, although I think many of them are too gruesome and otherwise “edgy” for most kids. Not to mention for their parents.

Here’s one for the sports enthusiast: The zombie referee.

There are so many inappropriate costumes out there for young girls. This one isn’t scandalous but sends a strange, mixed message with its name alone.

‘Nuff said. That’s all ’til next time.

iPhoneography: More Halloween pics

It’s that time again: Time to look at some interesting, odd and creepy Halloween costumes and items of decor.

Let’s get started!

We’re gonna start small this time and go big.

I don’t know about you, but I have sticky eyeballs when I wake up many mornings. But if I want a bag of 30 of them, I know where to go: Target.

There’s something about a bloody handprint that’s downright creepy. But bloody, kid-sized handprints on a window. Yeggh.

How about a costume that takes an ordinary item and makes it outsized? You can keep your banana costumes. For my money, you can’t top a costume that makes people want to throw sharp objects at you.

Everybody remembers that kid from school with a really big head. I think I know what happened to him. At any rate, I found his oversized skull.

How about a big spider? If you saw this ottoman-sized arachnid crawling across the floor toward you, you’d want a comically large-sized newspaper or magazine handy.

Last but not least, the ultimate Halloween version of a lawn inflatable. I don’t have any inflatables, but I love seeing them on lawns at Halloween and Christmas. I have a neighbor who even has a Thanksgiving inflatable.

This pirate ship, manned by skeletons, is the size of a mini-van.

That’s all for now. Next time, some cool and off-the-wall costumes for kids.