Halloween, Northglenn, Colo – 1966 (P.1)

 

As a child, October 31, was a favorite time, the summer about to leap into winter. People around looked thrilled. Halloween, an opportunity to dress as ghouls, cool monsters, favorite superheroes, and later, one favorite character from a novel or movie, to be someone else for an evening. I remember the Halloween of 1966, as memorable, only, I guess, our family and our neighbors invested so much time and love into the event in a small part. Then there was that first real romantic “crush.”

At ten years of age, society, and science considers you still a child, an innocent pubescent, and romantic love, would be an anomaly in puberty. No, sex aside, romantic love attached itself to me at birth. My first teacher 'crush' happened in 4^th grade in North More Elementary School and her name was Ms. Schuburg. Dark hair, green eyes, red lipstick, and the woman was nice to me. I mention my 4^th grade teacher because this is the first time since living in Colorado that I actually felt happy. It was worth getting up for school: Ms. Schuburg.

Opposite to these wonderful feelings of romantic love, over the last few years, I would experience what many psychiatrists would label “night terrors.” These episodes would occur at least three times a night throughout the week. Mother would rise from her sleep and deal with the insane midget. Wandering the halls of our 3 bedroom home like a panicked animal trying to escape. Escape from what or who remains a mystery to this day. It was only when turning twelve years of age that these episodes finally subsided, closed off, as it were, to the confines of the unconscious. In the end, in those terrible places of the mind or soul, my mother would read poetry. The sound of her soft voice and the rhythmic cadence of the verses brought me back to the present time.

What is Halloween, really?

This “celebration” goes way back, much further than cheap Superman costumes bought at the local grocery store. The Pagan Right of Passage and homage to the dead have recorded beginnings in ancient Greece, where off-shoots of paying homage to the dead have continued to this day, albeit in many different forms. Many people celebrate the holidays that they don't understand. Ironically, if by chance, you informed a fundamentalist Christian that, during the era of Jesus of Nazareth, that he too would take part in these ancient rituals, they would call it “fake news,” call you a demon, and you'll go straight to hell. We're comfortable in our own beliefs, faiths, and views of existence. To break that imposed reality on a person, particularly when they are not ready, is cruel, and in many cases, creates for more confusion.

I grew up going to Catholic Mass every Sunday, ensuring Confession on Saturday before, and receiving Communion the next morning. All was beautiful and perfect in my invisible bubble of innocent reality. The bubble exploded, and society and this world turned out to be nothing I was told and believed.

This turning of perception all was realized on this Halloween evening in 1966.