Halloween Wrap

Halloween was dank this year. Chill and drizzle feel right on Allhallow’s Eve, but it does cut down on the trick-or-treaters. About a dozen of various ages came by our house, not nearly as many as last year or the year before. We gave away cheapo lollipops, Blow Pops by brand name, two bags of which we’d bought at Meijer as almost an afterthought a few days ago. Blow Pops. Sounds like slang for something illicit. “After the cops knocked down the door, crime-scene techs uncovered evidence of a crude blow pop lab.”

The day before I’d gutted the pumpkin and cut a face into it. I’m not very imaginative when it comes to jack-o-lantern design, so it had triangle eyes and nose, and a ragged-tooth mouth. My most imaginative jack-o-lantern concept was in October 2001, when I came up with Osama bin Pumpkin as an entry in my office building’s pumpkin-carving contest, but no one in my office, me included, actually created such a thing.

But I did add a distinctive element to jack this year, unintentionally. I needed a candle to light his inside, so I took a scented one from the lower bathroom, vanilla I think. Four or five people commented on the “marshmallow” smell. It did smell pretty good. Maybe that’s what you get when you mix vanilla and pumpkin. I’ve discovered a new use for scented candles.

Ann had thrown up a couple of times during the day but otherwise didn’t seem ill (and she’s OK now). Still, we decided she wasn’t fit for trolling the block for candy. Just as important, she was too young to protest the decision or feel any disappointment.

So Lilly and I walked around in the light drizzle. For her it was merely the last phase of the holiday. Immediately after school, she’d gone trick-or-treating with her friend Rachel, another second-grader who lives about a half-mile away. Last Friday, Lilly’s school held a Halloween “dance” and I took her and her sister. Lilly wore her blue fairy outfit, Ann a “Cinderella” dress. That’s what we called it, anyway.

On Saturday, the girls didn’t dress up, but we accidentally participated in the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Halloween festivities (see Sunday). We didn’t know it beforehand, but it turned out that the zoo was giving away candy and other items to kids that afternoon -- to long lines of kids, many in costume, waiting for candy, so I guess they’d heard about it.

In fact, there were so many kids there to collect candy that the zoo was a zoo. In some places, the animal exhibits were closed, maybe because the zookeepers didn’t want the animals scared by the commotion. We waited in a few of these lines, equipped with paper bags supplied by zoo staff, and at the end of the lines other staffers gave away candy: second-rate varieties like Swedish Fish that had obviously been donated.

More zoo personnel -- or maybe Halloween temps -- wandered around in full-body costumes, including such characters as Minnie Mouse and Big Bird, which seemed to astonish Ann. Look what just stepped out of the TV!

Each of them walked around with another person as a kind of guide, since peripheral vision might have been limited by the getups. One came along dressed as the PBS cartoon character Arthur, with a female companion dressed something like a nurse. “Arthur and his physical therapist,” I said to Lilly as they passed by. The “physical therapist” heard it and laughed.