A friend made a comment on a social media site a few weeks ago, concerned that she was being premature in putting up Halloween decorations in her Missouri town. I responded to her that I live in Irvington, the Halloween capitol of the planet, and advised her to go get her Halloween on.
Long before I knew where Irvington was, I lived in Southern Indiana. My bride and I had moved our 6-year-old daughter away from her friends in Madera, California to Clarksville to be closer to our family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We sold a house in Madera and purchased a newly built one in Clarksville. Lisa’s parents worked to make her new home as memorable a place as her old one, which had an in-ground pool in the back yard; Lisa’s friends would gather around the pool and wait for permission to swim. Lisa’s father had met a family at a park they attended whose dad would take her to the nearby apartment they used to live in. One day, a loquacious young girl started talking about her parents and her “baby sister” and school and toys and all the little details of her life, until dad became curious enough to find out who the parents were. Soon after locating them, the families established a lasting friendship.
One of the things that developed from this friendship was that the young girl’s father was a musician who played keyboards, specifically, a Fender Rhodes. I sing (therefore, I am) and the two of us would get together and Willie Long Jr. would play, and CJ would sing. Willie guided me in the purchase of sound equipment, like a microphone and speakers, and when I carried my family East, to Indiana, I brought the audio equipment. Once in Indiana, Lisa’s parents strived to make her new home as comfortable for her as the “pool house.”
To help ease her separation anxiety I decided to make Halloween a livelier event. I had a big Peavey speaker with settings that allowed me to alter the sound. I taped my Shure microphone to my chest, and draped a gauzy black material over my head. When trick-or-treaters rang our doorbell, I would shine a flashlight up at my face, and growl into my microphone with a menacing tone. Lisa would open the door for the kids, who would see a monster’s face shining through the black film of fabric, and hear a reverberating growl. They would shriek and leap and flee from our front door, snagging candy on the run. Safe on the sidewalk with their parents, they would tell their friends, “You gotta go to that house! It’s horrible!” At Halloween time, scary is good.
My first seven years in Irvington were spent in an apartment that trick-or-treaters couldn’t find with a map. Now, I live in one half of a large double with my youngest daughter and youngest granddaughter, and we find ourselves to be Halloween challenged. Our neighbors have spectacular displays of spookery compared to our one Frankenstein flag, pumpkins and gourds. But I take little Myah walking, and she cries out in mock alarm, “monster” when we pass beneath one hanging from a tree at curbside, and she loves the Williamson’s whole-house eyeballs and tentacles extravaganza. I don’t know what shenanigans will be happening in these pandemic times; my 16-year-old grandson told me that he quit the trick-or-treat trail at 14; his 12-year-old sister told me she plans to go out if allowed, though she does not know “as what.” Here in Irvington, we will do as we must:
Say “Boo!”
cjon3acd@att.net