Them Ol' Halloween Blues

The Methodists got a strong hold on my Grandmama in my teen years. Not that she ever allowed me to participate in Halloween festivities anyway. “Is the devils birthday." She would spit through her dentures, cracking on a piece of pork skin. Rocking in her wooden rocker that sat below the old tapestry of an Anglo Christ that hung in the den. She used that tapestry as a blanket for her legs in the winter time while she read her Bible, listened to gospel music and ate too many ginger snaps. “Ain't nothing but a bold-faced declaration of witches and devil worshipers." Never mind she fixed up strange smelling potions in bowls put under my bed at night to bade my nightmares (it worked). Never mind her broom-spitting, non-pole splitting, ancestral-altar worshipping. "But grandmama, I just want to trick or treat with my friends. I'll even dress up as an angel," I'd promised her, begging on my knees at her lap. I only wanted to experience what had been impressed upon me my entire life, the single most thrilling, theatrical, and mesmerizing night of the year.

Well year round I fanatically binged The Adams Family and I had a habit of stealing my mothers old clothes and dressing up in her black funeral gown and red lipstick. I would finish the look off with Grandmamas enormous black church hat and would shimmy (and trip) frantically around the living room emulating Morticia Adams. I'd use my grandmother's old record player to really get into the feel of an old grand witch. She didn't have many records besides The Staple Singers or Mahalia Jackson. But she had an old Satchmo Decca record and it featured a track called "Skeletons in The Closet," and that was enough of a party for me.

Grandmama never approved, she didn't listen to much secular music anymore. And she would have me take off my "witches costume" after while she got tired of looking at it. But I would sneak up late to watch Carrie, Rosemary's Baby, and the Amityville Horror on the floor model TV we had on the porch. I laid on the rug in front of the warm wood stove, stuffing myself silly with candy apples, caramel popcorn and copious amounts of chocolate. I was lucky my grandmother adored sweets as much as I, but I wasn’t allowed to do much else. No parties to attend, no friends to trick or treat with or tour abandoned houses. In fact Grandmama made a point to send me to the Halloween event the Methodist Church would thow every year. God willing (or fearing) Wednesday fall on or before the holiday. It was sickeningly censored. We weren't allowed to dress up unless we were characters from the Bible. No skulls, monsters (demons) or imagery of death allowed. Even the sweets were limited to a few popular chocolates, fruit, and old Brachs candy. We watched “It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," on repeat.

Well at 13, the night before Halloween, I decided I was going to have the solo party of a lifetime. After Grandmama was dead asleep in her bed after 10pm of course. I dressed in my wicked black garb and donned my crimson lipstick. I used no lights but lit my grandmothers altar candles. I laid a white quilt on the floor to spread a feast of candy apples, popcorn and cookies. The Exorcist (of which I was explicitly forbidden to watch) was showing late at 1am. Far too frightening for my Hell-fearing self, I muted it and put on the Satchmo album. I wiggled and gyrated to that old jazz music until I was dead on the floor sweating from my dancing and the heat of the wood stove. I hadn't heard my grandmother wake, and limp to the door frame to take in the scene. The porch dimly lit by meltng candles. My tiny body dressed for a funeral sprawled on the ground on top of heaps of spilled popcorn. Eerie old blues music blaring from her record player. Crayon drawings of skulls and witches strewn on the rug before me. I had stolen my grandmothers beloved ginger snaps and ate all but 2. Oh the blatant sin of it all! After several enthusiastic rounds of the switch I was instructed to copy Isaiah 5:20 from the Bible repeatedly onto 3 sheets of paper front and back. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.” I was made to read aloud the entire book of Psalms the following Halloween night in front of her. All the while she played her old Staple Singers album: "Will The Circle Be Unbroken." But the record had a slightly haunting quality and many of the songs had that old bluesy rhythm to it. And so when I was done she allowed me some candy and I sat on the floor below her chair, tapping my foot to the music.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1bdm46bc7cXvKD0XRcXmTR?si=586ff70eb8764cd5

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