Halloween Thoughts

"You guys look so much alike. Are you brothers?" was a common question folks would ask when seeing us brothers running around in the summer.

Not knowing if that was good or bad to look like your brother, we would begrudingly respond with "Uh....yea, we're brothers." ---> /Smack little brother on back of head

Now we play WoW together, and get the same question. See picture of us.......yes, the resemblance is uncanny. Now stop bugn us about lookn alike!

~Don't Go In There
When growing up in the desert & mountain areas of California, my youth was not filled with X-box and PC games.....rather, the outdoors was my playground and the toys made from the cool stuff I found.

My brothers and I figured out ways to entertain ourselves by catching snakes, black widows, and scorpions (future WoW Hunters in the making). We built awesome forts out of anything we could find.....car hoods, tumble weeds, and sun-bleached bones were just some of our building blocks.

When not on foot through the rough stuff, we rode our bikes with abandon. We did crazy stunts, got skinned up, and got up to do it all again..... all without helmets! We would even wreck on purpose sometimes......into each other......in front of an on-coming car ..... just to freak them out. It was a different time then.

When I think back on those times during Halloween, I consider how different the culture is today by comparison.

When we went trick-or-treating then, it was till 1AM. And the last part of that evening was not spent asking for candy, but just being mischievous. It was like a night unlike any other. Our folks let us be......we came back alive, but maybe with more fake blood on us than when we left.

My most memorable Halloween involved an occurrence that was very unusual for me. It was at a mobile home, where the inhabitants invited us in for treats (you parents reading this are probably getting the willies right now). I was thinking that there must be really good candy inside, right......there wasn't. Instead, there was a long table set up with all kinds of delicious foods. These weren't the kinds of foods you stuff in a pillow case and leave with, no. It was deliciously messy foods like cake, ice-cream, donuts, yummy sandwiches, and hot cider. This was so different! We had to sit around the table to pickup and eat what we wanted, because we couldn't carry it. In the midst of this once-in-a-lifetime buffet, was a weathered old man, seated directly at the head of the table. Is this sending up a red flag to any of you readers?

Admittedly, this was a little weird to me then, but our group stayed anyway. As we ate, the man's eyes moved to each of us one by one, and he asked us about our costumes. "Who are you dressed up as", he would dryly ask. We responded between bites with, "a ghost" .... "a devil" .... "an angel" .... "a vampire", and around the table we each revealed the mystery of our costumes.

Continuing to eat what was on our stuffed plates, the old man told us stories of his youth and the spooky things he remembered doing on Halloween. I don't remember any of those stories now, but have always remembered how he brightened up and transformed into a seemingly more youthful person as he spoke. We left there with no more candy than when we arrived, but instead I took away the memory of that event.....it has always stuck with me.

It's 30 years later now, and if I could somehow visit that old man today, I would. I have always wanted to hear his stories again, listen to the details of his youth, and remember them this time.