It is gorgeous out today, a dazzling fall afternoon pushing 65 degrees. Blue sky and lurid leaves and I counted at least three convertibles with their tops down, cruising the annual Phinneywood trick-or-treat--a far cry from last year's torrential downpour. As ever, I took up a window seat at Herkimer Coffee and sat for a couple hours, cracking up and scribbling notes on the paper bag my breakfast pastry had come in. This is almost my favorite day of the year, definitely preferable to actual Halloween night itself. My neighborhood COMMITS. When I arrived, a grown woman in a rubber Catwoman mask and street clothes was enjoying her coffee at one of the tables.
CHILD DRESSED AS STRIP OF BACON, I texted Sis. She asked for a photo, but the kid had already run down the block in a sugared fever. Anyway, I don't feel right about taking pictures of strangers' children...but I will adore them from afar and describe them endlessly.
A whole Wizard-of-Oz family went past, Mom in what might have been a repurposed Slutty Dorothy costume; she had thick leggings on underneath, but that dress was short for the 1930s. One kid was a magnificent Tin Man, babe in stroller a lion. Dad, pushing the stroller, was wearing a padded plastic mailer like a vest, a house hastily drawn on the front with a Sharpie. I thought that was kind of weak sauce until I saw the wicked-witch legs, stripey stockings and all, sticking out under the...hem, of his bubble envelope. Okay, points.
The Herkimer gorilla was absent this year, giving my heart a little pang. Instead, a mime distributed Dots and Tootsie Rolls in twee silence, which seemed to still freak out a good number of the little urchins. I was relieved and somewhat mollified when Frankenstein emerged across the street to do his thing. Over at the Prost beer hall, I glimpsed their treat person in a Rockford Peaches uniform from A League of Their Own.
A wee spider, with multiple googly eyes attached to its black hoodie. A gorgeous, feathery, sequined pink flamingo. A little girl as the solar system: all the planets as ornaments pinned to her swirly star-patterned dress. She also had on planet socks, Saturn and Mars visible around her ankles. Left Shark hurried past, too intent on candy to bother with choreography of any sort. A lady went by dressed as beer pong, with red Solo cups pinned to her shirt; she was walking a yellow lab in a fuzzy beer keg outfit.
What is the collective noun, for an array of Wonder Women? (Besides "Congress 2018," amirite, nasty ladies?) I lost count of them, though the one that nearly impaled someone else's dad on her sword was memorable, as was the one that happened to be a Chihuahua mix. Another mom went by in a Handmaid's robe and hood, a Nolite te bastardes carborundorum placard around her neck. I gave her a grim thumbs-up through the glass. There was a Joker-Trump, and a Latino Trump, the only two I saw. The latter kid might have been of Puerto Rican or Dominican extraction, his candyfloss combover wig riding up on his own natural curls, and if that concept gives our bigot blowhard President nightmares, good.
A young couple took seats beside me, agog. "We just moved to this neighborhood. Do they do this every year?" they asked, awestruck and thrilled.
Little Orphan Annie needed to go potty, I think, judging by how she was clutching her DownThere. A lion tamer foisted her flaming (hula) hoop, festooned with fluttering yellow and red crepe paper, on her mother. (This is another part I love, the parents toting and/or wearing the various disintegrating heads and weapons and tiaras and accessories as the day grinds on.) In a weird hiccup of the zeitgeist, two Bob Marleys (Bobs Marley?) and then two Wednesday Addams...es went by within minutes of each other, none of them together. A tall gangly boy, I think? was dressed in a tweedy pink suit as Dolores Umbridge. Hey, Aquaman! You do you, buddy. Several kids wore their own backup snack distribution systems: one was a vending machine, lumbering along in a cardboard box with a plastic-wrap window displaying real bags of chips. Another was a gumball machine in a red onesie, with a clear plastic cake dome from the grocery-store taped to his or her belly, full of jawbreakers.
A tiny toddler lumberjack in plaid flannel, suspenders, toque and pegged jeans let his mother carry his wee plastic chainsaw. An even tinier infant Viking, with horned helmet and thick red beard, had to be carried. A girl was a carefully painted giant cardboard BOK CHOY--kiddo, you win for Most Unique. My other favorite? Two dads and two little kids, a quartet of Steves Zissou.
I know it's time to leave when the sugar crashes start to unfold in real time. That Ewok was out like the proverbial light in her stroller. Jack Skellington nodded out on his dad's shoulder with a nearly audible THUD. Behind me, a NASCAR driver was taking a little break, sorting candy. "Are you having fun?" asked one of his or her pit crew.
"I'm HAPPY!" declared the kid, holding up a peanut-butter cup. Me too, li'l leadfoot. Me too.
