(BLOG) Halloween in the Country

Halloween washes over us like raindrops in a swimming pool. In our consumer society, October 31 has become a time to buy a pumpkin, host or attend a costume party, see a frightening movie or eat sugary treats. The Wall Street Journal promotes adult chocolate confections at $20 for eight pieces. Overall, Halloween candy sales are around $6 billion in the United States. Did we create this consumer extravaganza or was it created for us to spend frolicking time, like Pinocchio did on Donkey Island? It is hard to tell.

Around here, Halloween is characterized by a couple of things. As an empty nester, I check in with younger neighbors with connections to school children to see when the trick or treat beggars are scheduled to be out. In rural Iowa, this is insider information. Sometimes we are the same as our nearby town, and sometimes we are different. This year, it was contingent upon the outcome of a football game. Our team lost so trick or treat night is Monday.

Each year I go to Hy-Vee to pick out something to give the children. This year it was small Hershey’s chocolate bars, individually wrapped for easy distribution and a sense of security. The only difference at Hy-Vee this year was there was a much larger section with candy and the selection seemed limited to products manufactured by a less than six large corporations. Bagged candy was more expensive this year, although I can’t recall by how much. It is an indulgence we can still afford.

Part of me wants to give a piece of Halloween fruit, like an apple or pear, or a cookie made at home. Jerks putting scary stuff into fruit in the past ended that. I would consider giving kids a book to encourage reading, but a book is too ideological. No one needs someone else telling them what to read and think on Halloween.

For me, Halloween is something else.  After the pumpkin is cooked and put up, the pumpkins seeds salted and roasted and everything ready for the visitors, I go outside the house and look at the leaves from the deciduous trees for a while. By now many have fallen, especially from the soft wood trees like maple and ash. They lie thick on the ground, waiting for the mower to mulch them into compost, so they can become themselves again next year

On Halloween, I neither rake the leaves nor clear a path through them on the driveway. I want to hear the feet of parents and their children crunching as they approach the front door. Partly for the warning, but more to remember when I would trick or treat, dressing up in a homemade costume, being young with my classmates, neighbors and relatives, and hearing the end of autumn illuminated by the light from a neighbor’s doorway.