Halloween was a big deal on East Monmouth Road. It was a big deal on Ashton and Idlewood too. And it was an especially big deal at our house. A month or so before, Dad would sit us down and ask, “What are you thinking of this year? Have you got a theme in mind?” Theme? What was he talking about? We just wanted to dress up and get a bunch of candy. Dad would nod, as if this was useful information, and get out his graph paper and mechanical pencil (it was always the graph paper and mechanical pencil, never regular paper and a plain old No.2 pencil). “What are you interested in? Comic books? Cartoon characters? Something you saw on TV?”
The interview was thorough and methodical. He asked questions, we answered, he took notes, asked more questions and, in a few days, he would sit us down again, right after dinner, when all the dishes had been cleared away, and this time his graph paper was filled with all sorts of notes, sketches, and calculations. He had listened to what each of us had said, considered the possibilities, and come up with some ideas. Would we mind if he ran them past us? Each of us was given a choice (“Which way are you leaning? Batman or Superman?”) but I realize now that it was only an illusion of choice, a ploy to make us believe we had free will in the matter of Halloween costumes. Dad knew exactly how to play us—we invariably chose the costume he had in mind.
Every evening after dinner he would go down to the basement where his materials were laid out on the workbench. Papier-mache was a favorite but he also used wood, cloth, even sheet metal. One year he made John a big devil head. He began by shaping it out of chicken wire. It didn’t look like anything at first, except maybe one of those abstract sculptures we saw on a field trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art. “I don’t like it,” John said. “Be patient,” Dad replied as he applied wet newspaper strips to the chicken wire. Once it dried he spray-painted it red and black and cut eyeholes out of it. It was pretty scary looking, with big pointy ears and a long pointy chin, high cheekbones and deep eye sockets painted black. John said “Neat-o!” My costume was less successful; I was a giant mushroom, with a big mushroom cap for a head, painted white with green spots all over it. Judging from the old photos I looked less like fungi than a walking penis, which would explain all the giggles.
One of Dad’s most successful creations was the Batman costume he made for John. He fashioned it out of cloth, wood, and hanger wire. The cowling was a single piece of black fabric which started at the nose, went over the head like a hood, continued down the neck and shoulders, and ended in a pair of wings. Mom sewed the cloth to Dad’s specifications, which included a narrow sleeve along the top of each wing, into which he slid one-by-one inch furring strips. In order to stiffen the wings he added lengths of hanger wire, which radiated downward from the sticks (Mom wasn’t thrilled that so many of her hangers were cannibalized but Dad told her that was the price you paid for Art). The wearer would pull the cowling over his face (eyeholes had been cut out of it) and the rest was draped over his shoulders like a cape. With a one-by-one in each hand he could wrap the costume around himself like a shawl, then, when the moment called for a bit of drama (say, when someone bearing a candy bowl opened the door) he would spread his arms to reveal his six-foot wingspan. John’s costume made such an impression on everyone that after Halloween he was bombarded with requests for private viewings. He brought the house down when he presented it to his class for show and tell.
But as far as I’m concerned, Dad’s crowning glory was the Martian Robot, which he made for me (I think he was trying to make up for all the teasing I got for the mushroom costume). The head was a kind of box cut out of sheet metal and topped with a white plastic dome made from an old milk jug and two antennae that had in a previous life been part of a set of backyard drink holders (these were part of an extremely brief mid sixties cultural phenomenon that assumed that it was the right—nay, the duty!—of every adult to enjoy himself in the comfort of his own backyard, free from the sometimes debilitating anxiety of knowing at any moment his martini glass might topple over due to its placement on an uneven lawn). There were flashlight bulbs on the ends of the antenne and an array of them under the dome and these were connected to a wire that went to a hand-held battery pack. When I depressed a switch with my thumb the antenna lights would flicker and the dome would light up, revealing the words “Take me to your leader!” The reactions I got almost made up for the discomfort I felt from the sheet metal digging into my shoulders.
Amy didn’t care about costumes, she’d have worn the cheap, store-bought variety most kids wore if Dad had allowed it. She grudgingly chose the Pippi Longstocking theme (and chose it several years in a row if I’m not mistaken) because the yarn wig and the knee socks were the least cumbersome of the various options. For Amy it was all about the candy, the collection of which she had down to a science. While John and I were still donning our costumes, she was streaking down the sidewalk, pushing trick-or-treaters out of the way in her mad race to the next doorbell. When the grown-ups answered the door, candy bowl in hand, she would shove a pillowcase under their noses (always pillowcases, never bags) and bark “Trick or treat!” By the time they asked “What are you supposed to be little girl?” she was halfway to the next house.
Amy averaged about three pillowcases per night. When her pillowcase was full she would race home and dump its contents on her closet floor, then head back out into the night. My brother’s haul was usually about a pillowcase and a half, maybe two on a good night. I dawdled, talking to other kids along the way, happy to discuss my costume with the adults who greeted me at the door (“Honey! You gotta come see this kid, he’s a robot!”), happy to do a slow turn so they could admire every angle. “My dad’s an engineer,” I would say by way of explanation, though for a long time I thought that meant he drove a train, like Captain Penny, host of my favorite cartoon show (years later Captain Penny blew his brains out with a .38 snub nose—you can read about it in The Plain Dealer’s archives if you don’t believe me). People, many of them probably a bit lubricated from the aforementioned martinis, would smile and pat me on the back—some even got out their Instamatics and took pictures—and after many goodbyes I would slowly make my way down the porch steps where a line of angry trick-or-treaters stood fuming, wondering what the hell the hold up was. I was lucky if I filled even one pillowcase.
The goal of Amy’s “candy maximization” strategy became apparent the day after Halloween. That was when the swapping began. “I’ll trade you a Baby Ruth for a Three Musketeers Bar.” No way. “Okay, two Baby Ruths.” Baby Ruths weren’t worth a lot but, being chocolate, they were nowhere near the bottom of the pecking order, which was reserved for apples and homemade popcorn balls (these were given to you by sweet old ladies and were immediately discarded, sometimes right there on their front lawns). Apples went from worthless to dangerous when the razorblade rumors started going around—years later we learned these rumors were what came to be known as “urban legends”—but, even without razorblades, unless they were dipped in caramel, no kid had any use for apples.
At the top of the candy heap was the $100,000 Bar. For a while there I thought they were actually worth a hundred thousand dollars, a pretty good return on a dime (though they tasted so good I’m not sure I would have taken the deal). My brother straightened me out on that count (“You idiot.”). Even without the hyperbolic name, every kid loved the $100,000 Bar because it was the perfect blend of chocolate, caramel, and Rice Crispys (like a Nestles Crunch bar only much better), so perfect some claimed it had been created by scientists in a laboratory, which made them even cooler of course. Not to mention it was a new candy bar (as opposed to Baby Ruths, which had been around since our parents were kids). At the end of the night the more $100,000 Bars you found in your pillowcase the more valuable your haul.
Amy always managed to talk me out of my $100,000 Bars, usually by convincing me an O’Henry or a Kit Kat was worth more, which was simply preposterous. Every year I vowed I wouldn’t be snookered this time and every year she somehow got me to go along with the deal. Even John got taken a few times. She was just a much better negotiator than either of us, better than anyone we knew in fact. And when she was finished with her brothers she went to work on the kids at school. She would leave every morning with a bag full of crap and return with Snickers, Milky Ways, and Three Musketeers bars. To this day I don’t know how she pulled it off.
Once she had the perfect mix of candy she would squirrel it away somewhere, the location of which was known only to her. (One year John plundered her cache when he found it under a pile of sweaters in the back of her closet—Amy made sure that never happened again.) Sometime around mid-November my candy would run out. John’s usually lasted another month. And this was when the diabolical nature of Amy’s candy agenda emerged. Up to that point she had been very economical in her consumption, having one piece of candy to every two John and I ate, and usually the low level, non-chocolate stuff like Smarties and Pixie Sticks. Once she knew we were out though she’d step it up. We’d be watching “The Early Show,” which came on every afternoon at 4:00 (it was usually a Tarzan movie, Amy loved Tarzan movies, but only the ones starring Johnny Weissmuller) and she’d casually pull out a Milky Way and start eating it as noisily as possible. If you asked her for a bite she just laughed.
Amy now had the leverage to make us do things for her—set the table, clean up her room, carry her books to school (the more demeaning the job the better). And not even for the really good stuff like Almond Joys or York Peppermint Patties—the best you could hope for was Butterfingers or, if she was feeling generous, a Fifth Avenue bar.
By early February she was down to Jujy Fruits and Chuckles, maybe a few Mary Janes (nobody but my grandmother, and perhaps a few pioneering pot heads, liked Mary Janes). Eventually her supply dwindled to stuff like Turkish Taffy and Neccos and she’d have to cough up a lot of Turkish Taffy if she expected us to do anything for her (I wouldn’t eat Neccos if you paid me). By March her candy was gone and with it any leverage she had. The power dynamics returned to normal. For the next eight months Amy had nothing on us. But by early September, even before Dad started thinking about how he was going to top last year’s costumes, Amy was strategizing about how she was going to top last year’s haul. Maybe she could increase her efficiency by using larger pillowcases. Maybe she should focus on the houses she knew gave out the best candy—the more $100,000 Bars she got the more trade bait she’d have. Or, perhaps she could double her take by convincing those doling it out she had a retarded brother at home. What if she carried two or three masks with her so she could keep hitting the same houses over and over again—subtly altering the way she said “trick or treat” each time? It might work. Either way, it was going to be another long winter for John and me.