My
first cousins responded on Facebook with the following:
·
Paula Arzoian: I love this one, Mark!! I especially like the
idea of the pre trick or treat parties. Might have to steal that one day.
Halloween has always been my favorite, even more so now that the kiddo is a
Halloween baby Thanks for posting this!
·
David Aram
Gavoor:
This is one of your better articles. While clearly not a "deep thought piece,"
it's written extremely well, covers a topic we all know well and captures you
to a T! Thnx.
I
was at an engagement party a few weeks ago.
It was for another first cousin’s, Chris Merian’s, son Daniel and his
lovely fiancée Laurie. Chris’s brother,
another first cousin, Ralph and I sat out in the beautiful Michigan fall
evening and smoked a cigar. We spoke
about a variety of topics. At one point,
about half way through the cigar, Ralph said, “I really enjoyed your last
letter. You know the one where you mused and meandered.” He clearly was saying that he enjoys the lighter
letters more than the ones with
weightier topics.
The Wily Ara Topouzian always comments on my writing as
well. Comments is actually too benign a word.
He basically takes shots at everything but then makes sure he points out
that this means, at least, that he reads everything I write. In a serious moment, which is rare for Ara
but welcomed by all who know him, he will also say that he likes the lighter
and more nostalgic pieces over the “deep thought” pieces.
I
recently wrote a business blog: Fire a Customer?
Ara commented, in his inimitable and totally irritating style:
·
Most
of the feedback I get is in line with my cousins and Ara. Even the hits to my blog tend favor the
lighter and more nostalgic pieces. This
most certainly begs the question, why I do not listen to my audience. It is a basic tenet of Total Quality, a field
in which my industrial and consulting career is based, is to seek out and heed
the Voice of the Customer (VoC). The VoC
here is speaking pretty loudly and clearly.
The VoC is saying reminisce more and stay on the lighter side of thing.
I
would heed this sound advice except that I write about what moves me. I write about what is top of mind and what is
in the news to the point of being in my face.
This kind of personal writing and blogging is definitely a hobby not a
business. In this light, I appreciate
and value the VoC but might not heed it as much as I might if it were a
business. But, I certainly do get the
point and will try to make this piece lighter and more nostalgic.
It
is the end of October. It is actually
Halloween Day as I am finishing this letter.
They holiday hype is in full gear.
People decorate their house like they do for Christmas. Costumes are elaborate and there are
opportunities abound to wear them for kids and adults alike.
Back
in my day, which was basically the 1960s, it was a different story. Halloween was big for us as kids but it was
really just one day. The decor was
minimal. The vast majority of folks
around our part of town had a carved pumpkin and that was it. If someone had two pumpkins or even three we
would ooh and ah at the extravagant decorations. No parents really dressed up for the evening
that was entirely the domain of kids. There was no scary music blaring from any
loudspeakers. There was no eerie
lighting, animatronics, ghosts in the tress, or gravestones in the yard.
We
did not have specially made plastic pumpkins for our treats. Some of used pillow cases while others simply
used paper bags with handles. As the
paper bags got heavier, there was always the very real fear of the bag ripping
and our booty falling all over the ground.
This was an even greater risk when we trick or treated in the rain.
We
always went out on October 31st.
There was no real concern about it ever being a school night. Back then, we did not have that much homework
in grade school and certainly teachers were conscious of the holiday in their
lesson planning.
Back
then there was no notion of global warming and it was often down right cold on
Halloween. There was no daylight savings
time, so it was dark by 5 or 5:30. It
was dark and cold. My Mother, wanting to
make sure that none of got sick had us in winter coats and even snow suits if
it was cold enough. So, we had dual
level costumes. We were not just
skeletons, ghosts, or vampires. We were
the Michelin Man dressed as skeletons, ghosts, and vampires.
Our
costumes were not elaborate. The vast
majority were not store bought. As a
result, there was a disproportionate of us trick or treating as hobos back then
wearing our fathers’ cast-offs and thus the easiest costume to make. Ghosts, being equally easy to fabricate, were
also quite popular. If the costumes were
store bought, they were pretty budget by today’s standards. There were not a lot of choice and I recall
the skeleton costume as the most popular store bought one for boys and perhaps
a princess for girls. I do recall the
store bought costumes had molded plastic masks that were both uncomfortable and
almost impossible to see out of. If we
used make up for mustaches or beards, we used whatever our mothers’ had make-up
wise and it was adorably amateurish.
I
am sure my Mother will correct me on this but I not recall wearing our costumes
to school or any church related activities.
There were no parades and the local businesses really never did anything
special for the holiday.
It
was a darker time. Truly, it seemed
darker. The streetlights were few, far
between, and incandescent. Our
flashlights were essentially useless and the only lighting on houses was the
porch light and sole candle burning in the sole pumpkin.
Some
things, however, have not changed. The
first and foremost is the love of the holiday.
Certainly the buildup was shorter.
Homes weren’t decorated the entire month of October. There were not really any Halloween parties
leading up to the big day. But, the big
day was, indeed a big day. Our joy and delight
in Halloween was as pure and fun as it is for any kid today.
I
only remember trick or treating with my sisters. There was no question about that. It was a family thing and we reveled in the
glee of it. As in most households, one
parent took us out and the other stayed home to dole out the treats to other
children. We would get home by eight and
pour our bounty on the living room carpet to take inventory. As we went to the same houses, we had exactly
the same assortment. We were allowed to
eat a few items… but not too much.
Friends
were not involved until the last year I went out. That year I went out with my friend and
fellow Boy Scout Brad Lackie. It was
clear after just a few houses that we had pushed the envelope a bit far and had
no business being out there but continued and gathered our bounty in our trick
or treating swan song.
In
Detroit, Halloween was, in fact a two night event. Certainly, the 31st was the bigger
and better of the two. The night before,
however, was something different. We
called it Devil’s night and it was dedicated to mischief and mayhem. Windows of homes and, mostly, cars were
either waxed or soaped. Doorbells were
rung with the goal of running and hiding to see the reactions of those
answering the door and finding no one there.
Eggs were tossed at both houses and cars.
I
may have soaped a window or two and, maybe, I rang a few doorbells but Devil’s
Night was never my thing. I am pretty
certain calling it Devil’s Night was exclusively Detroit. With the decay of the city, the mischief and
mayhem intensified to the point, about ten years ago, when arson became the
main focus of Devil’s night. There were
so many abandoned buildings that people just burned them. It became so bad that the mayhem became national
and international news for several years running. It was embarrassing notoriety
for the city I grew up in and had such warm Halloween memories.
There
is a neo-classic 1983 vintage Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. The film
is based on a 1966 book “In God We Trust, All Others Must Pay Cash” by Jean
Shepard (1921 – 1999). The story took
place in a fictional Indiana town very much like Hammond, Indiana where Shepard
grew up. The story is set in the late
1930s or early 1940s (the family car in the film was a 1937 Oldsmobile). There was nothing special about the working
class neighborhood but the popularity of it is in the charm of the characters
and nostalgic strings that the movie pulls on. As a result, everything was special about
that working class mid-west neighborhood.
Jean
Shepard was a master at both aspects that made this film memorable to the point
that per Wikipedia “in 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the
National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant’.”
Shepard was able to weave timeless charm around characters we could all
relate to. He created a nostalgic
feeling for a time that was a good twenty years before my time but felt so very
close. Given the popularity of the film,
I apparently am not alone in my reaction.
Certainly
Jean Shepard’s words are a major part of the nostalgic lure of this movie. But to anyone who has seen the movie, the
narration, an adult Ralphie basically telling his own story, was a large part
of the movie’s alluring longevity. Shepard,
who was also a radio personality, did the narration himself. Cool.
That
is kind of how I view my Halloweens back in the 48227 part of Detroit that I
grew up in. We had the same charming and
colorful people in our family, as friends, as neighbors, and as teachers in our
beloved Burns School. It was a time when
families only had one car, one television, and one radio which was only
AM. We did not have a dishwasher, dryer,
garbage disposal, or air conditioning.
We weren’t wanting but it was a time just before the consumerism for
which America is now known took over.
That may be why those days were closer to the America of A Christmas Story than it is to the
America of today.
All
this nostalgia is good and all. It
refreshes the soul and allows the spirit to recall memorably good times. But, this does not eliminate the duality of
that was raised at the beginning of this letter i.e. between reminiscent and
deep thought pieces. I am after all a
mish-mash of right and light brain.
Obviously, if you simply prefer the reminiscent and nostalgic, I
recommend you stop reading right here.
On
the way to teach a statistics class this morning, I was listening to Morning Edition
on NPR. They had a great piece on
a statistical study around trick or treating.
George Wolford, a psychologist at Dartmouth, along with some colleagues
conducted the following experiment. They
gave half the children full sized candy bars and the other half of the children
a full sized candy bar and a piece of bubble gum. Wolford noted that “Those children that got
both the full-sized candy bar and the bubble gum second, rated how delighted they
were to get these treats lower than those people that got the candy bar only.”
This
is counter intuitive to the old trick or trick belief that more is simply
better. The Morning Edition piece
concluded that more candy is not necessarily better.
I
had, of course, another point of view.
Not being a psychologist but more so a mathematician and statistician, I
would separate this question into two parts.
First, there is the perception of getting the particular treat either
the full sized candy bar alone or the full sized candy bar and bubble gum. Each exchange has, as any kid would tell you,
its own level of discovery and delight.
I recall approaching each house and wondering what they would be passing
out. A full sized candy bar both in my
day and today is a very nice and generous surprise. I can see where combining a delightfully
surprising treat with a more mundane would diminish the delight to somewhere in
between the high delight of the candy bar alone and the more average delight in
just getting a piece of bubblegum.
Secondly,
there is the issue of volume and the joy in having done gathered a lot. This might not be fully appreciated until the
end of the night when the bounty is poured out onto the table or floor. Then we can assess fathom how much we
collected and how much we collected relative to others.
Am
I making this more complex or simplifying things? That is the topic for some future piece. This seems different then and more meaningful
that making this judgment based on the treat given at just one house.
I
have to go there are trick or treaters at the door.
Happy
Halloween.
