Even the young adults have faltered. Consider for a moment the Gainesville Halloween Masquerade Ball of the 1970s, a never to be forgotten porridge of raucous music, licentious costumes, open-air ribaldry and police overtime. Transvestites in their very best finery minced the streets, the Clockwork Orange gang reappeared, now and then someone asked and answered the question, “Why don’t we do it in the road?” The University of Florida, on whose hallowed grounds these events began, took umbrage, mortified beyond belief, and eventually cancelled the orgiastic shenanigans. After a short and boring resurrection at Santa Fe College on the periphery of town, the Ball fell into disuse and never returned. Inertia is a powerful mistress.
So now, all the good times are past and gone. Halloween is just another night when proper folks dress up in respectable costumes, sip wine and listen to Alice Cooper cover bands. The kids dutifully report to mall stores for the assigned treats, wax crayons are out of vogue and, worst of all, there’s one less practical application for dogshit. Frankly, we’re mad as Hell and we’re not going to stand for it any more. As we speak, we’re climbing the stairs to the roof of our Sunset Tower where sits the sky-piercing Witch Signal, then spinning it in Bron Beynon’s direction and turning it on. Where have you gone, Margaret Hamilton, the nation turns its hopeful eyes to you?
Season Of The Witch
Throughout most of history, witches have not won many popularity contests. Case in point, Salem, Massachusetts, 1692, where little Betty Harris, age nine and Abigail Williams, all of 11, began behaving very strangely. The girls went into sudden fits, screaming, contorting and complaining of biting and pinching sensations all over their bodies. A local doctor, finding nothing, claimed they must be victims of bewitchment, although in retrospect it could have been ergot poisoning from mere rye bread. “Ergot” being a fungus which contained lysergic acid, a precursor for the synthesis of LSD.
The gooberly Salemites, unsophisticated in matters of witchery, went a smidge overboard, grabbed their pitchforks and torches and went hunting. When the famous witch trials of the seventeenth century were finally over, 141 suspects had been tried, nineteen were executed by hanging and one was “pressed to death by heavy stones.” Jeez. Must’ve been a penis-hexer.
What chance does a poor witch have when we are exposed as tiny children to Holda and her oven in Hansel and Gretel, the pome-poisoning Wicked Witch in Snow White and the sorceress Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty? From our earliest years, the witch, with her pointy black hat, warty long nose and scary cackling laugh has been someone to fear. She’s a pariah, a menace with formidable powers and bad intentions, who might on any given night fly through your bedroom window and turn you into a porcupine, a salamander or a weaselette like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Meanwhile, a male wizard or sorcerer is usually given the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it’s the tacky broom.
In the past 50 years, however, the various covens have pulled off their greatest magic trick of all, pooling their money to hire a better P.R. man. The witches suddenly got more favorable TV shows, reinvented themselves as “Wiccans” and signed up Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Today, more women than ever are witching it up on social media, consulting tarot cards and casting spells to bumfuzzle enemies of humanity like U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz, whose head has recently been converted into a perfect cube. “It’s all good these days,” reports secret Wiccan-in-training Sybil Reitz of Chevy Chase. “I’m almost ready to come out of the broom closet.”
The Pumpkin Has Landed
Of all the great Halloween celebrations in the U.S., The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze in Croton-on Hudson, New York might be the brightest. An army of pumpkin carvers take on 7000 of the things and leave them shining along the river near Van Cortlandt Manor. There are also “stargazing” opportunities inside the Pumpkin Planetarium, flying ghosts and a special appearance by nearby Sleepy Hollow’s Headless Horseman.
In Salem, Mass., the Festival of the Dead celebrates Halloween all month long but the Witches Ball at the end of the month is de rigueur for everyone, a festival of magic, music and messages from the spirit world. I went once but the seance medium told me Elvis was unavailable and I walked off in a huff.
In Romeo, Michigan, of all places, 80,000 Hallows Eve customers show up every year at Terror On Tillson Street for the frighteningly extravagant decorations, the killer-clown house, a ghostly pirate ship and a hockey rink full of skeleton skaters. Each year, the city adds a new wrinkle so the celebration never gets stale.
Not many people would invite The Walking Dead to their hometown. Who needs the constant drooling and sloppy dining habits? But Lexington, Kentucky”s Thriller Parade provides more upbeat zombies and a more jubilant walk than you might expect. Set to the music of Michael Jackson’s big hit, several hundred of the undead dance, dawdle and drag themselves down Main Street for the big event. Grotesque costumes are encouraged.
The residents of Manitou Springs, Colorado have a good sense of humor, otherwise how to explain the brilliant Emma Crawford Festival? Legend has it that Emma was buried high atop a mountain until one fine day when a landslide washed her away, coffin and all. “To honor her life,” the town now holds coffin races at Halloween. Teams of contestants meticulously decorate their coffins, then place their own version of Emma inside and cruise down the street trying to beat one another’s times. If you’re more of a glue-gunner than a racer, take heart, there are also prizes for Best Coffin Design.
Not Dead Yet
Immediately after All Hallows on November 2 comes Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead, an important annual holiday throughout all of Latin America. In Mexico City, festivities include an enormous parade which includes thousands of costumed participants, hundreds of dancing skeletons and even a celebratory altar in the city’s Zocalo to honor those who have passed over the Taco Bridge.
November 2 is also Bill’s 83rd birthday and he’s still not in a hospital, assisted living or on the wrong side of the sod, having survived climbing up too many mountains, vicious assaults by his tractor and the last two seasons of Gator football. If making it through your seventies is a challenge, getting out of your eighties is a voyage fraught with peril where body snatchers wait around every curve on the road, ready to toss you into the meatwagon. Next time you’re in church, light a candle.
What’s With All These Pamme/Pams?
(With the exception of several Janis Joplin stories, the following Halloween tale is in the Top Five most requested articles for reprint we’ve published in The Flying Pie since its inception in 2010. This is its third iteration, rewritten slightly. The woman’s name is real and last time we looked she was still extant and residing further south in Florida. May she live well and prosper.)
In the course of all the spectacular Gainesville Halloween Masquerade Balls, I missed only one, though you might say I exchanged it for another. The Subterranean Circus closed at 10 p.m. daily, about the time the Ball started to get really cranked up, and the four of us who closed the store that night planned to head over as a group, walking the six blocks to campus. Five minutes before closing, as happened a lot, a surge of customers rushed in, one of them being a beautiful and serene young blonde named Pam DuBois, who had been a friend and dormmate of my ex, Pamme Brewer. I hadn’t seen Pam in months and had only spoken to her in passing while waiting for Ms. Brewer at their dorm or at events the three of us might be attending. This night, we discussed old times while her girlfriends and my crew gradually worked their way outside. Just idle chatter, the jargon you might expect with anyone not seen for some time.
We headed down the three steps to the parking lot, but before we got there. she whipped the door around, backed into it to slam it closed and kissed me the way lovers on the Titanic must have done before the ship went down. My first thought was, oh well, guess I’m going to miss the Halloween Ball. My second thought was that I would probably recover from the disappointment. In all the scandalous years of the Circus, with runaway teenyboppers, Glinda the crotch-grabber, after-hours wine-tasting events, Dick North bodypainting parties and numberless other outrages, nothing quite like this had ever happened. I was delighted that I lived next door, thus giving Pam little time to change her mind.
Discussing Philosophy in the aftermath of sex, as all of us do, I gradually realized Miss DuBois was looking for a Hero, someone to hold on to who would reinforce her own beliefs in a world full of treachery and disappointment…a sensitive poetess at cliff’s edge. She saw in me a person who had battled for Truth, Justice & The American Way with the Charlatan, challenging UF censors, whipping evil deans and coming out on top. “After all of it, are you still an idealist?” she wanted to know. I knew the answer that was required and I certainly wanted to keep her around but I foolishly told her the truth.
“You know, Pam….”
I recalled the eventual punishment meted out by the opposition, which included a libel suit lost in court and appropriation of much of my property, including vast acreage on Newberry Road which would eventually be worth kazillions of dollars. I was still an idealist, but was I a purist of the first order? No, afraid not. This, of course, is not the answer the lovely Pam DuBois wanted to hear. She reflected on my words for a suitable period, then got up and dressed, finally depositing one last gentle kiss on the lips before disappearing slowly through the doorway. The next time I saw her three days later, she had a girlfriend. As John Prine likes to say, “That’s the way that the world goes ’round, you’re up one day, the next you’re down. It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown, that’s the way that the world goes ‘round.”
In all honesty, I didn’t really feel all that bad for myself in the moment. But as you might imagine, I was deeply chagrined at the thought of letting down my entire gender.
That’s all, folks….
