HAPPY HALLOWEEN LOYAL AIRMEN!!!  Late last night I was in the process of downloading images to these files and trying to think of what I was going to regale you with today.  I've several interesting pulp projects that need promoting and what not.  Then I realized exactly what weekend this was!  It's Halloween, the best kids holiday of them all.  And the second that thought flashed through my mind, so did tons of absolutely wonderful memories all tied around this spooky time of the year.  And so that's our theme for this week, hope you enjoy this.

When I was a kid growing up in the sleepy town of Somersworth, New Hampshire, late October was very much a haunting time.  Most of the leaves had fallen and the trees were bare, skeletal creatures lining all the streets and surrounding woods with their bony tendrils.  In those days there were no Walmarts or Targets and even had there been, my parents certainly wouldn't have had enough extra money to afford plastic costumes that are so the rage these days.  Nope.  My mother, and all the other mothers, saw this as a special time to get creatively macabre with their little ones and half the fun of the holiday was making your own outfits.  Of course since being a hobo, or vagabond if you will, was still in vogue and very easy to do, I believe half the kid population in Somersworth went out Trick or Treating as hobos.   Of course Beggar's Night, as we called it, took place on All's Hallows Eve…i.e. the night before Halloween.   Imagine being a kid and told that on one special night of the year you were allowed to go to every single house in town, knock on the door, say a few inane words and get FREE CANDY!!!  It was childhood Nirvana.   And, as I recall, no dinky cheap little bags for us, no sir.  Mom was in for the big haul and we were given pillow cases to carry our sweet loot in.  Time will always play tricks on one's memory of how things truly were, but that's okay because a person's memories should be colored with fondness and exaggeration every now and then.  Mine were canvasing seventy-percent of Somersworth in just a few short hours and then coming home with my pillow case half full and weighing a ton.  Spreading out a mountain of treats on the kitchen table to my Mom and Dad's delight and knowing we'd be eating candy for weeks and weeks to come.  God Bless Halloween.

As we grew older, into our teen years, Trick or Treating lost it's appeal.  It was in turn replaced by our obsessed fascination with all things HORROR.    By the late 50s and 60s most of the old Universal monster classic movies had made it to televisions and I can remember countless Sat nights watching a double-feature Chillerarama with my younger brother George and our cousin, David, who lived next door.  It was our cultural education into American gothic mythology.   Of the classic three, Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man, my personal favorite was Lon Chaney Jr. in his star-making role as the cursed, Larry Talbot.   Chaney was brilliant in evoking pathos and you always felt sorry for him even when he was scaring the living hell out of you. 

My father was a movie-addict himself and by the time I was five years (no lie), he was dragging me to the Saturday afternoon matinees as his sidekick.   Mom wasn't always keen on this, as Dad took me with him to see everything, from westerns, to war movies and yes, horror flicks.  Now granted there were no new Wolf Man movies by the 50s, but there were newer versions, ala The Werewolf, Curse of the Werewolf and a true B-movie gem, Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.   I mention all of these because every single time we were heading off to the theater to see one of these blood-curdling dramas, Mom would chastise Dad with the prediction I'd be having nightmares.   And she was always right.  I would wake up in the middle of the night convinced the Wolf Man was hiding in my bedroom closet just waiting for the perfect time to pounce on me (I must have been ten by then) and tear me limb from limb.  Thus would I bolt out of bed and race out of the room, completely abandoning brother George to his fate, I was a coward, and go charging into my parents room screaming for my life.  Mom would roll over, look at my father and say, “I told you so!”  Ah, the joys of an over active imagination.

It really was a wonderful childhood, despite the monster-movie scarrring. Ha.   Over the years I've continued to thrill to scary movies and books.  Not to be confused with the blood-and-gore junk that passes for horror movies these days.  Sorry, it can't hold a candle to the classics.  They relied on stories and suspense to provide the chills, not tons of body-parts flying every which way.  And I do have modern favorites in both formats. 

The one movie that truly frightened me, and still does to this day, is THE EXORCIST.   The suspense builts from the very first scene to the last in an orchestrated fashion that nearly had me jumping out of my seat every time we were sent back into the possessed girl's bedroom…and she just kept getting uglier and uglier.  It deserves to be a classic.

Book wise, I give Stephen King the nod with his SALEM'S LOT.  Aside from Bram Stoker's titular DRACULA, it is by far the best vampire novel every written.   I go back to it every now and then and marvel at King's genius in bringing that outerworldy menace to a very quaint, recognizable New England town.  It gave me the chills the first time I read it and continues to do so to this day.

Of course there lots more books and movies that I could spend page after page applauding.  But those two are just my personal favorites. I'm sure all you airmen have your own and that you love them dearly.  So here is wishing all of you a particularly gruesome/wonderful Halloween.  Go put on a costume, scare yourself and have a grand old time.  Halloween is a magic time that keeps us all young forever.

Ron, over and out.