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Halloween brings back good memories

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Georgia Kohart
October 26, 2009

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat for Halloween

Better give a treat that's good to eat

So when ghosts and goblins by the score

Ring the bell on your front door

Better not be stingy or

Your nightmares will come true

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat for Halloween

When the pumpkin shells

Cast evil spells

Your little white house turns green

Every post

Is a ghost

If you've got a witch's brew

And if you want your gate to circulate

Ho ho! We can do that too!

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat for Halloween

So when ghosts and goblins by the score

Ring your bell or pound your door

Better not be stingy or ... BOO!

"Trick or Treat" lyrics are from the 1952 Disney cartoon by the same name.

We certainly don't want our little white house to turn green or for our gate to circulate, but we are looking forward to handing out Halloween treats this week. It will be the first time in 15 years that troops of candy-seeking kids will "ring the bell on our front door." It used to be a big night at our house, but it was more about the costumes than the candy.

Costume discussions began about the same time as the school year. Ideas were trotted out and discarded based on several deciding factors, the main one being: Will Mom make me wear a coat over it?

Having girls, we usually went with gentle themes when creating costumes, with the exception of the year our oldest went as Dr. Machete, the evil surgeon. As this was not long after she'd had her tonsils removed, I'm guessing it served as a sort of catharsis -- the fake blood-smeared scrubs and leering, penciled-on goatee and eyebrows.

We created a colonial lady the autumn after our trip to Williamsburg. We had a lengthy procession of fairies, princesses and other fanciful characters from Mother Goose and favorite bedtime stories, among them Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Bo Peep, Juliet, the Tooth Fairy and the symbol of eternal youth, Peter Pan.

I'm so very grateful we didn't have horrible, gory costumes. I've never liked that part of this time of year. I do not like horror flicks, however, I do love the black and white scary movies.

When Tim and I were in grade school, little did we know our future mates were glued to the floor in front of the television after school, watching the same "Big Show" on Toledo channel 11.

We loved the wacky host Mr. T and his crazy antics, like lip-synching to the lyrics of "Where did the Chickie Lay the Eggie" and other classics.

What drew us to the screen, though, were the really bad movies played on his program at 4 p.m. every weekday. The scarier the better, we thought. Until ...

For Tim, it was "The Invisible Invaders." For me, it was "The Killer Shrews," with "The Giant Gila Monster" slithering into second place.

According to the Internet, even horror-genre guru Stephen King had the bejabbers scared out of him in his youth by the shrews. In later years, when I happened upon the movie on cable, I had a good laugh when I saw the voracious, overgrown mammals were merely knee-high dogs wearing wigs that looked suspiciously like string mops.

All this month the Turner Classic Movie channel is showing a bunch of those good old movies. We have every intention of setting a bowl of popcorn in front of a 1958 classic, "The Blob."

It stars a very young Steve McQueen and Aneta Corsaut, best known to TV viewers as Helen Crump, Sheriff Andy Taylor's long-suffering girlfriend on the "Andy Griffith Show." I hope we can stay awake for "Die, Monster, Die" with Boris Karloff and Nick Adams. After all, both movies are in color!




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