In the town of Irvington, Indiana, October is a special time. As soon as the calendar changes from September 30th to October 1st, the houses and grounds of the town bloom with ghosts and goblins and graves: Oh, my!
My neighbor across the street had work done on her sewer system; the heavy machinery plowed up the dirt in her front yard, and left a small hill. In the spirit of Halloween, plastic skeleton arms, hands, and heads now peek from the dirt pile. South of my residence is a house that will probably get a prize for its ghoulish decorations, which include full-sized skeletons and talking pumpkins. As I wend my way South on Ritter Street, I pass trees festooned with tiny ghosts, giant spiders and enormous webs on the railings leading to a spooky door, a yard full of plastic skeletons, and an enormous black cat blow up. At the corner of Ritter and Michigan there are three giant blow-ups. Frankenstein, a ghost and a witch are all about 15 feet tall.
When I lived in Southern Indiana, I used some ingenuity and musical equipment to create a properly spooky Halloween environment. I taped a microphone and a flashlight to my chest, and stood in the dark entryway to my house with a filmy black sheet draped over my head. When the kids rang the bell, I would turn on the flashlight, activate the reverb, and growl into the microphone. My big Pioneer speakers would howl and the kids would see my face beneath the sheet. They would leap into the air and bolt down the steps and onto the sidewalk. There, they would tell other kids, “You have to go to this house!”
My current residence is more modestly decorated for the spooky time. I have 6 small fabric witches, ghosts and goblins hanging from hooks on the front porch; attached to the walls are spiders and spider webs and a drawing of spiders and webs, by my artistic granddaughter. A one-legged plastic skeleton is poised over the mail slot to greet the mail carrier, and a lighted spider web has a spider in it. (A real spider has set up shop in one corner of the porch, and I wonder what that orb weaver thinks of the competition.) Next to the front steps of the porch, a four-foot high blow-up Casper, when activated, draws a barking comment from Bear, a neighbor’s dog. That neighbor’s porch is covered with lights that outshine the little one that tattoos my house with rotating spooky images.
Irvington has to be the greatest Halloween show on earth, and I have taken the tour bus that visits so many of the decorated houses. I often wonder how much more people pay for electricity in October to light all the decorations. I am also amused to see cars stop and disgorge kids — some of whom just barely qualify — and watch as they work the street until picked up again by their rides. But I am not mad at ‘em. I wish that I could accompany a child as they work their way from house to house, crying out “Trick or treat!” But the candy man has to mind the bowl, rationing the Reese’s, Snickers and M&Ms, cautioning the older kids that they may have only one, until the magic hour when the sanctioned begging must end. And so goes the Halloween Time.
cjon3acd@att.net