Dia de los Muertos

Day of the Dead, All Saints' Day, cleaning smashed pumpkin off the streets day.

Also my dad's birthday, 68 years ago my grandmother had to slam the door on the trick-or-treating kids in gangster and hobo and witch costumes while my grandfather pulled the car up for the mad dash to the hospital. She always told this story with a snicker, how the bowl of buttered popcorn on her gi-normous belly started moving down and she realized this was it.

One 10lb 6oz baby later...my 5'2" grandmother came home to rotting pumpkins on the front porch, a sink of dirty dishes from the week of bachelor living and couch sleeping my grandfather had been doing, and all that candy still there from October 31st. She dove in to that project first.

It's been fun to see the swing back to door-to-door trick or treating, and last night the adorable bobbing little costumed gnomes started swimming from porch to porch, and all that delayed evening gloaming of daylight's savings time made the usual beer-in-hand of the dads in the street rather un-PC. Too bad, really, because the beer keeps them from eating all the best candy out of the loot bags and plastic pumpkinhead buckets. Maybe it will be moms with Starbucks cups glowing in the twilight instead. My neighbors' son was dressing as a scary tiger, all 2 and a half years of him, to scare the little kids, he said, rawrrr! Too funny, I think his Gran made his costume, which is the absolute best.

I used to have a picture of my dad and me, on Halloween, carving and drawing on a 3-gallon pumpkin. I had on my golden rayon satin tiger jumpsuit, probably about 3, but I'd taken the stiff plastic mask off some time earlier. My dad had my mom's dark brown waxy eyebrow pencil in his hand, and he had just finished drawing some tiger whiskers and eyebrows on my face, with a round dark circle on the end of my nose. I'm looking up at him, and he's leaning over, with his black crewcut and white crewneck t-shirt on, putting the finishing touches on the devil face of the pumpkin, a focused look on his face. It had sharp horns drawn on, and he had cut out the jagged sneer of an evil smile, arched narrow eyes, all menacing. He was good at this, a prelude to his birthday festivities every year. The neighbor middle-school boys would come over for my dad to help with their pumpkins, to be r-e-a-l-l-y scary. Then we'd wash, salt and bake the seeds on cookie trays, crunchy snacks, a great contrast to all the candy.

Nostalgic Autumn Projects

Autumn Childhood Fun Ideas:


Iron beautiful leaf specimens between sheets of waxed paper (low to med heat setting on iron)

Add grated or shaved crayon bits to it for a stained glass effect

Collect glossy horse chestnuts and pile in a bowl or fill a vase---add branches of sumac, mountain ash or bittersweet

Drill holes in chestnuts and make big strings to hang up on fences using shoe laces or twine

Caramel apples with wrapper caramel (easy) or microwaved caramel cubes (still easy)

Rice Crispie treats with some melted caramel cubes stirred into the marshmallow goop, a dust of cinnamon and some chopped dried apples stirred in, too

Dip pretzel rods in white chocolate for skeleton snacks

Make dried gourd monsters (or luminarias) with sandpaper and a Dremel tool, paint and tea light inside

Thread sunflower heads together and hang along with the chestnut strings on your fence posts for the birds and squirrels (peanut butter is optional)

Make a giant Trick-or-Treat loot bag out of a white pillow case and, with a black marker, draw the mask from "Scream" on it so the open side is at the top

Make more "Scream" masks from white pillow cases, open side down, for your shrubs near the front door to pull over the bushes on Halloween Night.

Fill an old (clean) milk carton with ice cubes and a candle wick, then pour melted max over it to make ghost candles

Designate once and for all that Candy Corn is purely ornamental and not really edible by gluing a bunch to some white pillar candles

Save some egg shell halves to use as bug-eyes for your Jack-o-Lanterns---carve the round eye holes the same size as the eggshells, and have the bloodshot eyes already drawn on with a pinhole poked through when you put them in the pumpkin--scary!

Turn your homey porch "Harvest" hay bale and corn stalk display into the "Children of the Corn" theme for Halloween with a big plastic scythe and ax, some fake blood, some zombie dolls
and rubber masks peeking out with red glowing eyeballs--or Amityville Horror, depending on your style of porch

Remind your mom that the "Elvira Mistress of the Dark" costume is not appropriate to drop off the cupcakes for the lunchroom Halloween party---besides, you're wearing it to school