It's Halloween and the treats have already started. My neighbor rapped on my front door last night bearing gifts of caramel apples. "I just couldn't wait!" she giggled handing over the candy fruit. There is something about Halloween that makes everyone act like a kid.
Maybe it is the sheer nonsense of the holiday, and the freedom to indulge in pretend silliness - a healthy activity according to late breaking studies.
Halloween has always been my personal favorite; less about costumes than about candy and more importantly, of safely indulging in heart racing acts of terror. For what is Halloween without a good haunted house, blasting soundtracks of ghostly moaning, piercing screams, and thumping heartbeats?
When I was at St. Anselm's it was the purview of the 8th Grade class to block off the raised gymnasium stage and create a maze of frightful pit stops for our younger classmates. We went to town, boiling pots of spaghetti for guts, opening cans of olives for eyeballs, and squishing jiggly jell-o for I don't know what. It didn't matter as long as it made the younger kids squeal.
We all had a part to play, dressed as the living dead, witches, ghouls or executioners, and we were going to play our parts well. We turned out the lights, turned up the cassette player and waited anxiously for our prey.
We took sadistic delight in blindfolding the excited youngsters, spinning them around until they were dizzy and then leading them up the back stairs - pulling more like - to guide them through the transformed stage. We made sure they tangled themselves in the crepe paper strips dangling from the ceiling, took silly string blasts full in the face and when they hesitated, shoved their hands into the bowls of disgusting and absolutely inedible food.
We knew we had succeeded when they finally made it through the other side, not quite as brave and smiling as when they started. And we made money on the deal. 50 cents a head if memory serves.
When the lights finally went up and we surveyed the mess that we had to clean, there were no regrets...only longings of our own. If only WE had upper classmen to scare the living daylights out of us! And the longing never ends.
From now until Oct. 31st I will be on the hunt for a good horror flick and I won't be satisfied until I find one that makes me feel just like those poor unsuspecting innocents felt all those years ago.
Musings and Memories of Growing up a Marin Kid.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Harvest Time Harkens the Past, Present and Future...and it is All the Same.
Fall is here. My favorite time of the year, anywhere, but especially here in Marin. Not only do we get our lovely Indian Summer, but things start to slow down. Frenetic summer activities have given over to quiet mornings; kids trudging to school through the crinkly leaves collecting in the street gutters. Soon, wood smoke from afternoon fires will hang in the air.
I am more myself at this time of the year than any other. Maybe more reflective because of the coming holidays, but also because harvest time seems to make the world close in on itself. There are less distractions because everywhere, the pace is slowing down. Even Mother Nature is snuggling down, setting the sun early and pulling the blankets up over her head for her long winter's nap.
I often hear East Coast transplants complain that it doesn't look like fall out here. It's nonsense that we West Coast babies do not get seasonal colors. Just look to our gorgeous hills turned the color of a lion's mane. And our bonus is that in a few short weeks they will be luscious emerald green.
Of all the changes since my childhood, indeed, since my fathers' we've at least done a good job preserving our open spaces. And I don't just mean Mt. Tam to the south and Mt. Burdell to the north. In spite of the hillside homes, there is still plenty of Marin left that my grandmother would recognize if she were still alive.
I had the fun of looking through a book of Marin history recently with pictures of long skirted women and waist coated men standing on dirt roads beside their trusty Model T's. But then I lifted my eyes to the hills behind them and saw my own backyard. My beautiful Marin - the graceful waves of hills dotted with our gnarled and stoic Oaks. It was unmistakeable!
And then it hit me. I feel the same warm afternoon breezes scented with the dry wild grasses that blew over their faces. They heard the same gentle songs of the chickadees and the spirited squawk of the blue jays that greet me every morning. When they turned their faces to the late October sun and let the rays warm them opening their eyes to survey the then wide open spaces, they loved the place just as I do.
They did have more of the original Marin than we have, but how much else has actually changed? Have WE changed? In that same Marin history book I stumbled upon a chapter describing the educational concerns of early Marin.
A 1975 researcher studying issues impacting the public school system since 1891 found close parallels between concerns voiced at School Board meetings, including, Lack of Funding, Class Size, Poor Curriculum, Outdated Facilities, Drug Abuse, and the only one I did not recognize, Segregation/Integration.
I'd like to think that even if we don't solve our educational woes in the next 100 years, my great grandchildren will look wonderingly at pictures of me, standing beside my trusty Volvo station wagon and recognize behind me, the same lovely backdrop of Marin and understand that as important as it was to me and to my grandparents to preserve what of Marin we could, that it will be just as important to them, and their grandchildren.
I am more myself at this time of the year than any other. Maybe more reflective because of the coming holidays, but also because harvest time seems to make the world close in on itself. There are less distractions because everywhere, the pace is slowing down. Even Mother Nature is snuggling down, setting the sun early and pulling the blankets up over her head for her long winter's nap.
I often hear East Coast transplants complain that it doesn't look like fall out here. It's nonsense that we West Coast babies do not get seasonal colors. Just look to our gorgeous hills turned the color of a lion's mane. And our bonus is that in a few short weeks they will be luscious emerald green.
Of all the changes since my childhood, indeed, since my fathers' we've at least done a good job preserving our open spaces. And I don't just mean Mt. Tam to the south and Mt. Burdell to the north. In spite of the hillside homes, there is still plenty of Marin left that my grandmother would recognize if she were still alive.
I had the fun of looking through a book of Marin history recently with pictures of long skirted women and waist coated men standing on dirt roads beside their trusty Model T's. But then I lifted my eyes to the hills behind them and saw my own backyard. My beautiful Marin - the graceful waves of hills dotted with our gnarled and stoic Oaks. It was unmistakeable!
And then it hit me. I feel the same warm afternoon breezes scented with the dry wild grasses that blew over their faces. They heard the same gentle songs of the chickadees and the spirited squawk of the blue jays that greet me every morning. When they turned their faces to the late October sun and let the rays warm them opening their eyes to survey the then wide open spaces, they loved the place just as I do.
They did have more of the original Marin than we have, but how much else has actually changed? Have WE changed? In that same Marin history book I stumbled upon a chapter describing the educational concerns of early Marin.
A 1975 researcher studying issues impacting the public school system since 1891 found close parallels between concerns voiced at School Board meetings, including, Lack of Funding, Class Size, Poor Curriculum, Outdated Facilities, Drug Abuse, and the only one I did not recognize, Segregation/Integration.
I'd like to think that even if we don't solve our educational woes in the next 100 years, my great grandchildren will look wonderingly at pictures of me, standing beside my trusty Volvo station wagon and recognize behind me, the same lovely backdrop of Marin and understand that as important as it was to me and to my grandparents to preserve what of Marin we could, that it will be just as important to them, and their grandchildren.
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