Halloween

Halloween is a great day for anyone under 10 years old.  At that age who wouldn't want to dress up in costume and head out around the old neighborhood to get candy from everyone?  I remember a pack of us traveling around the Musterfield in Framingham with our pillow cases back in the early 50s.  Then we grew up.

One funny story.  When we were 13, a bunch of us were out marauding around the neighborhood on Cabbage Night, the night before Halloween when you were supposed to wreck stuff, when we passed by a house three blocks from mine.  The house's owner was a real asshole, one of my paper route customers who never tipped and always bitched about his paper being late or being placed on the porch instead of inside the storm door.  Against the side of the house lay a 10' ladder.  "Let's grab the ladder," someone said.  So we took the ladder and started running down the street with it.  Almost immediately, the owner bounded out his front door, screaming, "Stop, you little bastards!!!"  We kept running, but finally dropped the ladder.

That didn't stop the asshole, though.  He kept coming.  So we split up, heading in different directions hoping to lose him.  About an hour later I finally felt safe enough to go home.  On entering the house, my mother greeted me with the words, "Did he get you, too?"  Playing dumb, I wondered what she was talking about.  It turns out that when we split up, the guy kept chasing Binky Driscoll.  Binky, not being from the neighborhood, didn't know where to go, so he ran into my house through the back door and hid in the foyer.  The guy followed him in, found him, and knocked on the door.  My mother answered, told the guy she'd take care of it, and the guy left.  I was grounded for a month.

Binky went on to become a famous Vietnam War legend, an Ace as a Navy pilot, and recipient of the Navy Cross after getting shot down and rescued in the China Sea.  His exploits have been documented in the TV series on famous air battles, he has served as an instructor at Top Gun, and he currently gives motivational speeches all over the country.  But whenever I see him, the first thing he brings up is the ladder episode.

Halloween was always fun with my own kids.  Then they grew up.  My sons had about 10 other kids in the neighborhood to hang with, and on Halloween all their school friends would come to our neighborhood as well to raise hell.  I dreaded Halloween.  More than once I picked them up at the police station for doing stupid, nonsensical things like throwing eggs.  They never got in trouble because I knew all the cops from having their kids or the cops themselves in class or on one of my teams.   And when the kids from outside the neighborhood got chased, where did they head?  Our house, of course. 

Sometimes my kids were blamed on reputation alone.  One Halloween at 9:00 PM we were sitting at our kitchen table with Brian and Mike eating candy when the phone rang.  I picked it up, and an irate neighbor from the next block raged at me.  "Hey, Mr. Crane, your goddamn kids are in the street throwing eggs at my house right now!"  I said, "Are you sure?"  He said, "Yeah, and I'm gonna call the cops."  I was furious. "Listen, you asshole," I said.  "My kids are sitting here with me right now at the kitchen table.  Maybe you ought to look a little harder before you blame someone." 

Now I tolerate Halloween.  The neighbors with little kids bring them to the door, and they look cute in their costumes.  For some it's the only time I see them all year.  Nobody lets their kids out alone with their friends like when we grew up.  Last year Jackie put a pumpkin suit on Spencer, our Golden retriever.  We walked him around the neighborhood late, knocking on a few doors to trick-or-treat.  He was a big hit.  But the hood was quiet, a big diffference from years ago.