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Hunker Down with Kes

I Survived…But Just Barely!

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Mercy sakes alive! Am I glad Halloween is over! All that stuff about ghouls, goblins, gremlins and such lurking about in the fog and mist, searching for whom they might devour, scares me. More than just a little…

I don’t like things that go bump in the night. Especially if I am one of those things! I don’t want anyone running at me wearing that bloody face mask with the hatchet sticking in it. I don’t want to hear a blood curdling scream coming from the back bedroom. And I don’t want somebody’s great grandmother sleepwalking past my house after the sun goes down.

I don’t like spider webs and dark alleys either. I don’t go to movies with chainsaws in them. I don’t drive down any street in America with Elm in the title. And I’m not putting anything in my mouth that was cooked in a cauldron stirred by a pantheon of toothless ladies wearing long black robes.

Yeah sure, you can say it’s all just a figment of the imagination. Until that headless horseman rides by…

Halloween is my least favorite of all holidays for good reason. I’m not into incantations, bogymen, demon possession, the Grim Reaper, witchcraft, warlocks, vampires or apparitions. I don’t even know what a poltergeist is. And I have never flown on a broom in my life.

I don’t know how we dream things like this up. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that candy sellers, costume makers and Hollywood producers have more to do with it than some medieval tradition.

And honesty compels me to report that I have eaten the candy and worn a Lone Ranger mask as I knocked on Miss Brooks or Aunt Jessie’s door. But I wasn’t trying to scare anybody. I was hoping for a Butterfinger or a Three Musketeer. Of course, we were happy to settle for Milk Duds and Red Hots.

Listen, a few niblets of candy were a steep price to pay on a night when ghosts, zombies and tombstones were the order of the day.

And as color schemes go, Halloween is a nightmare (pun definitely intended). Orange and black is not a good combination. Just look at the Cincinnati Bengals’ uniform…

This is not a religious thing with me. I’m not opposed on some kind of moral ground. This is not one of those “life or death” deals…hopefully! And I don’t necessarily think young kids will be warped for life getting the daylights scared out of them every once in a while in October.

I don’t think I was.

And I certainly don’t blame the Jaycees because they set that haunted house tent up every year in that vacant lot across from the old city hall when I was a boy. It really wouldn’t have been all that scary…if they had used some better lights and done away with that diabolical laughing machine and left out the casket and turned off that giant fan that blew bits of skeleton bones and pumpkin seeds all over you. And it wouldn’t have hurt none if they had cut an escape hatch in at least one of the rooms…

The worst part was trying not to look scared. Yogi would come out of that tent laughing. So did Ricky and Buddy. They’d want to go back and do it again! I couldn’t tell if they were that brave or just pretending. All three of them were a lot tougher than me.

I’d laugh and say “OK” but my heart, and my knees, weren’t in it.

The whole thing is Leon’s fault. He took me to see “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” when I was way too young to be there. And Larry Blackburn or Paul David Campbell or one of his friends had snuck one of those sprinkling bottles used for ironing past Mr. Clericuzio…

Well, you can see this coming from miles away. Every time that awful looking fin-covered creature came up out of that dark murky river to grab the heroine a splash of water would cascade over the back of my head. My heart leaped into my mouth so many times my esophagus looked like an accordion playing “There’s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere.”

And then I had to walk home all alone. In the dark. Through the woods behind the swimming pool. By myself. With no one else around!

There is a razor thin line at times between imagination and reality. Edgar Allan Poe referred to it as “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Rod Serling called it “The Twilight Zone.”

Halloween will force that stuff on you if you’re not careful.

You’ll be seeing Black Lagoon monsters, Chucky, Vincent Price and Jack-o’-lanterns behind every shadow…

Boo,
Kes