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Halloween: Of Tricks, Treats, and Crab Cakes

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Contributed by: Rob Guthrie on 10/15/2006

Halloween is almost here. Candied apples, ghouls, goblins, jack-o-lanterns, witches, Michael Myers, costume parties, headless horsemen, and of course, the trick-or-treaters.

The Scottish call them guisers; to us they are (sometimes not so) little hooligans running around in everything from a sheet to an eye patch to an elaborate Skateboarding Teen costume, complete with pillow case for the big take. Trick-or-treaters are part of the Western backbone of a holiday that has morphed and bent but never broken since its Celtic inception over a century and a half ago.

The monikers are a plenty: Hallowe'en, All Hallows' Eve, and All Saint's Eve, just to name a few. The Irish call it Samhain, translated as "End of Summer"; a harvest celebration and a festival to ward off evil spirits. November 1st on the Roman Calendar was considered to be the first day of winter---winter being representative of human death---and Samhain was considered a time when the dead could revisit the mortal world.

Personally, only having known the modern, western cultural version, Halloween has still always been one of my favorite nights. For me it was (and is) simply the coolest, creepiest day of the year. I love the history, the tradition, and the eeriness of the supernatural and occult that surrounds it. I've always loved special effects, great costumes, gory makeup and the like. My favorite literature and movies from my childhood are a ghoulish gaggle:

The Pit and the Pendulum
Frankenstein
The Wolf Man
Dracula
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
House of Wax
The Monkey's Paw
Creature from the Black Lagoon
The Fly
The Premature Burial
Salem's Lot
The Tell Tale Heart
The Howling
The Exorcist
The Shining

Man, if it was creepy or it crawled (or began with "The"), I was all about it. Friday nights there was a program that aired around 10:30 called Creature Feature---each week they would show a different scary movie. Vincent Price flicks were regular fare. Obviously it was my unspoken goal to stay up late enough, permission or no, to watch every one. The snowy black-and-white telecast made it even better.

For me, Vincent Price was the undisputed king of horror films---and if Price was king, he owed his fiefdom to Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr., feudal lords of the craft. (I'm telling you, if you've never seen Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) , where you are treated to all three classic horror characters, well then you just ain't lived!)

One of my most memorable Halloweens in adulthood was in Aspen, CO. We were there for Garret's hockey tournament, but there were no games that night, so Amy and I dropped into a local pub to have an early bite to eat (around 5 p.m.). Flash forward 5-6 hours: we are still at the same booth, the empty room has now filled to capacity with costumed revelers of all shapes and sizes, and I---sporting no costume and having at this point had way too much to drink---am having the time of my life chatting it up with the waiter, who is dressed in a prisoner outfit, ball and chain included (I kept calling him Andy, as in Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption).

Amy, having had crab cakes earlier for dinner, discovered her particular intolerance for the shellfish and alcohol combo platter, visiting the curb more than once on our long, cold walk back to the hotel.

(Hey, I said it was memorable, not glorious.)

These days Halloween is mostly about handing out mini versions of favorite candy bars, hoping we have enough so we don't run out (and that we don't have too many, a precursor to packing on ten more chocolate pounds before Thanksgiving). I always think I might put together a cool setup in the yard, or play some creepy music, but we normally end up busy until the night before, when all we can muster is a trip to the store to stock up on last minute bounty for the kiddies.

This year we will watch my DVD copy of Abbott and Costello's masterpiece. And perhaps The Shining for good measure. Garret's too old to trick-or-treat, and we aren't doing Aspen this go-around, so I suppose there won't be much that's memorable.

So as homage to that inglorious night several years past, and with apologies to the legendary Edgar Allen Poe, I offer this short verse:

Once upon an Aspen dreary, while we pondered, weak and weary,
Over shellfish and a curious glass of fermented store,
While I teetered, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of the waiter gently rapping, rapping his chain upon the floor.
"'Tis Dufresne," I muttered, "of previous Shawshank lore.
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was near November,
And one pub's erstwhile member wrought her cookies upon the floor.
Eagerly Amy wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my wits so full of sorrow- sorrow for the lost fermented store-
For the rare and radiant waiter, forced to clean the splattered floor-
Queasy here for evermore.

* * * *
Have a safe and happy Halloween.

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Rob Guthrie

Parker , CO

Rob Guthrie has posted 12 stories and 21 comments since joining on 6/15/2006. Rob Guthrie 's average story rating is 5.

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