By Fran Wood
Rarely is it more obvious to me how dramatically things have changed over the years than on Halloween.
When I was a kid, anybody over 5 went trick or treating in their neighborhoods accompanied by siblings or friends. No parent felt they had to go along to ensure a child’s safety since, after all, these same kids played outside by themselves all the time.
They’d roam a block or two in any direction, go biking or rollerskating on neighborhood sidewalks, walk five blocks to and from school unaccompanied. Why would it be necessary to accompany them in this annual mission for sweets when they knew everyone who was on the other side of each door?
Nor, may I add, would parents worry about any unwrapped candy or fruit in the booty brought back home. There was no concern for hidden razor blades or contamination. Lots of people held out a bowl of candy corn or malted milk balls for kids to scoop up a handful for their paper sacks.
Not to mention the fact that the presence of a parent would immediately blow your cover, assuming your costume was at least in part a means of making neighbors guess your identity.
Today, we live in a world where no thinking parent lets their kids out of their sight. As for unwrapped treats, they’re chucked into the garbage the minute they arrive home.
These changes are a little sad. Still, there also are improvements over the Halloweens of yesterday – notably, the costumes.
The past two Halloweens I’ve inadvertently had the pleasure of witnessing the parade of young children going store-to-store in Morristown, and some of the costumes are amazingly imaginative. Some of this is due to these kids’ imaginative moms, no doubt, but a lot owes to the considerable improvement in store-bought costumes.
In my trick-or-treating days, kids picked from whatever Woolworth’s was selling that year – the perfunctory witches, pirates and goblins of course, plus cartoon and storybook characters like Felix the Cat and Cinderella.
I remember the Felix costume as sort of a tacky jumpsuit, string-tied at the back of the neck, with the black parts stamped on the appropriate places. The plastic mask was a facsimile of the character’s face.
The reason I recall Felix in such detail was because I wanted that costume. I yearned for that costume.
Alas, I grew up in a house where my mother wouldn’t have been caught dead sending me out in a “bought” costume. Her involvement in summer stock and community theater had prepared her for ambitious costuming, and she wasn’t about to pass up the chance to exercise her expertise. At Halloween, three kids translated to three opportunities.
She also had access to the Morristown Little Theater’s costume wardrobe – which, as I recall, was housed in one of the buildings in Catherine Lane off Maple Avenue – possibly in what now is the home of the Morris County Art Association.
My mother’s modus operandi was to rifle through the racks of costumes in search of something that would trigger a vision. Once, she dressed me as a Dutch girl in a blonde wig with braids, a puffy-sleeved blue dress and carrying a broomstick across my shoulders, pails suspended from each end.
Then there was the black silk coat with gold embroidery and frog closures that inspired her to dress me as a Chinese Mandarin, complete with a long black braid. Another year I was a pirate, but nothing like the store-clad variety. I had swashbuckling boots, a bandanna, one gold earring and a mustache and long, realistic-looking scar skillfully painted on my face.
If there was one thing my mother knew a thing or two about, it was stage makeup.
We had a costume parade at school in those days. I almost always won the “originality” prize, clear proof that my mother was right.
To be fair, I did enjoy one Halloween as a glamorously attired (at least from my perspective) ballet dancer, though I thought the effect somewhat marred by the velvet cape I had to wear to ward off the cold.
But in my heart of hearts, I wanted to be Felix the Cat.
Fran Wood has never lived more than five miles from the Morristown hospital where she was born. A columnist for New Jersey newspapers for more than 30 years, she retired from The Star-Ledger at the end of 2008. She periodically blogs at www.njvoices.com.
