It’s 46 Global Warming Climbit Chainge degrees here this morning, landlord hasn’t turned on the building’s heating system, and it sure feels like Halloween is breathing down our necks.
I had a witch mask like that when I was in 5th grade; and yes, other kids were afraid of it… until they recognized my voice.Somebody else had an Ida Lupino costume, but no one was afraid of that.
It was all in fun. Way back before the sleazy element crept in.
Once upon a time in the 1950s, on Halloween, my father used to take us to New Brunswick to see the Halloween paintings on the store windows. Downtown New Brunswick was bigger than I knew how to calculate, and there was a lot to see. In those days it was a nice small city: our family shopped there a lot. Now… Well, what gets better anymore?
I loved gawking at all those window paintings! Some of them were really quite scary–at least, if you were eight years old. The one I remember best is a painting of animated trees with leering faces–like something in the Old Forest in The Fellowship of the Ring. Trees that can move around when you’re not looking, and are up to no good: we are so lucky that there’s no such thing.
As our 1954 Mercury went up and down the streets, we gazed wide-eyed at the multitude of ghosts, goblins, monsters, witches, giant spiders… and evil trees.
I wonder which cities still do this, if any. Which towns? All you need is a shopping district and a lot of enterprising artists with warped imaginations.
Which is easier to come by?
I am wearing my Halloween T-shirt today, the one that says “This Is My Halloween Costume!” And we’re equipped with Reese’s Cups in case any trick-or-treaters show up, although I don’t expect them to. And maybe this afternoon we’ll watch The Mummy (the real one, with Boris Karloff) or some other horror classic.
Why do this? Why try to have fun on Halloween?
Oh, I don’t know! To take our minds off the real monsters who are coming after us in this election? The Mummy always gets smacked down at the end of every Mummy movie; but just try getting rid of Chuck Schumer. And speaking of the Mummy, have you seen Joe Biden lately?
I have happy memories of Halloween. When I was four or five years old my parents got me a Donald Duck costume and took me trick-or-treating. I was convinced I looked exactly like Donald Duck! And we still have photos of my sister, Alice, in her cowboy costume.
What was so bad about that?
And every Halloween my father would take us for a drive around downtown New Brunswick, where they had an annual contest of painting Halloween scenes on the shop windows.
But our whole culture has been massively corrupted since then, and Halloween has not escaped unscathed. It’s like those new, modern horror movies that lay claim to sophistication because there’s a lot of cruelty and everybody gets killed. Blah-blah.
Well, here at Chez Leester, we’re going to have what fun we can, and for a few hours try to ignore the real monsters who want to eat our country. We had to special-order my Scary Shapes Mallowcremes, couldn’t find ’em in the stores–and just for a very little while, pretend the monsters will be gone next morning.
Back when New Brunswick, N.J., was a thriving, busy, blue-collar city with a downtown shopping district that attracted folks from miles around, the merchants used to celebrate Halloween by having their shop windows painted for the occasion. They don’t do it anymore. New Brunswick is still our county seat, but badly in need of re-upholstering.
But back then it was a shoppers’ mecca; and every Halloween, my father used to bundle us kids into the car and take us to New Brunswick to see the painted windows.
This was just great; I remember it well. The colors were so vivid, and some of the scenes were deliciously scary. I remember one painting of some trees coming to life and reaching out to seize a hapless human. I wonder now if the whole thing was a contest, with prizes and kudos for the winners.
Somewhere this delightful custom still exists, or I wouldn’t have been able to find a photo to illustrate it. We just don’t have it around here anymore, and that’s a loss for us. It died out before I was old enough to try my hand at window-painting. What fun it must have been! It was certainly fun, tooling around the city and enjoying the pictures.