When early autumn walks the land...

Heffernan family traditional
Halloween Pumpkin face

  Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune on Saturday 10-1-22 

Ah, October.  Halloween season — a great time of the year.

Yeah, I know most people would choose Christmas holiday season as their favorite. Go ahead, if that’s your choice. But for me, the crackling leaves of early autumn, the cooler weather, the resumption of school and many activities that lie dormant in summer, are as welcome as the flowers in May were a mere six months ago.

 

And then there’s Halloween, just 30 days away. Wonderful Halloween. Trick or treat, soap or eats — hey, what happened to that? Trick or treat’s still around but what happened to soaping the windows of homes where residents refused to give out candy?

 

Seems like everything’s going down hill. You never hear about it anymore. Back in my trick-or-treat days, quite some time ago, that was what we said when we rang the doorbells and people answered: “Trick or treat, soap or eats,” we’d threaten. Of course most people gave out eats, but those who didn’t even answer their doors were in danger of having their windows soaped.

 

We — my friends and I — tried it only once on a grumpy neighbor whose house was dark on Halloween night, the doorbell never answered. So we tried to soap a few windows — regular bar soap purloined from kitchens and bathrooms of our homes.

 

We discovered that soaping windows isn’t that easy. Just a few white marks on the windows but to really do mischief it would take you all night, and we had promises to keep, and candy to eat before we could sleep. So forget soaping.

 

Halloween has so many wonderful traditions and symbols. Scary ghosts, ghouls, goblins, carved pumpkins, fearsome monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, Giuliani.

 

You can say what you want about Frankenstein, but he was a man of parts. I must admit, though, I don’t know much about ghouls and goblins. You hear a lot about them this time of the year, but I’ve never really understood what a goblin is. I always knew I was supposed to fear them, but who are they really?

 

Google, a goblin who knows everything, says goblins are grotesque, monstrous creatures first showing up in Europe in the Middle Ages. You remember the middle ages, don’t you? They showed up right after the Dark Ages and before the Renaissance, after which I did my trick or treating. Goblins range from mischievous household spirits to malicious vestal thieves, it is said. “Vestal”? I always thought virgins were vestal. Live and learn.

 

But enough about ghouls and goblins and ghosts, oh my.

 

All this folderol is over what is actually “All Saints Eve,” the night before “All Saints Day” when Christians commemorate all the saints of the church, both known and unknown, who have attained heaven.

 

I did not know all this without conducting deep research like respected academicians undertake. These “facts” are according to a website attributed to Encyclopedia Britannica. The roster of heaven-dwelling saints does not include the New Orleans Saints, but might consider the St. Scholastica Saints if they behave.

 

So as you send he kiddies out the door on October 31, bags, plastic pumpkins in hand (don’t bring soap), take solace in knowing you are starting the ball rolling on commemorating all those saints who have preserved us for the past millennium or two, give or take an age, era or epoch.

 

Time marches on.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Scariest Halloween in History...

Edvard Munch: The Scream 1893

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune, October 31, 2020

Holy smokes! This is the scariest Halloween in my entire life, and we’re talking a lot of years here. Instead of being frightened by people wearing masks in the past, this year we’re frightened by people NOT wearing masks.

 

Who’d have thought that could ever happen?

 

I don’t need to document why this is the scariest Halloween in history, but I will anyway. First there’s the global pandemic, thank you very much. Covid19 for short. Have you had a nose test yet? I’ve had two.

                                                                                                         

The other day I got a call from an office I had visited recently advising me that one of their people had tested positive and they were reaching out to everyone who might have had contact with that person recommending they get tested. So I arranged to drive through the Sears Roebuck Quick Covid Testing site at Miller Hill Mall where a guy wrapped in ghostlike protective gear, seemingly in keeping with Halloween, ran a projectile up my nose and sent me packing. I never left my car.

  

“We’ll let you know,” he said as I drove out of sight, Happy Halloween to all and to all a good night.

  

Backing up a bit, I should explain the site is in the former Sears auto service center at the mall. I used to drive through it for such things as new tires, before Sears went out of business there.

 

But I digress. Covid 19 isn’t the only thing making this the scariest Halloween in modern history. There’s that election in three days, in case you forgot. And what an election. I’ve been through a lot of them but I’ve never seen anything like this one.

 

This year’s election has caused me to reflect on a lifetime peripherally associated with politics and politicians. As a former journalist, I have met and interviewed numerous aspirants to political office, as well as many of those who actually made it. It has given me insights into people who seek to lead us in government, and, regardless of their political affiliations, have some things in common.

 

Aside from nobly wanting to help people, the main trait they all share is they love it. Absolutely love it. This is most true of those who have been elected at least once and enjoyed serving in the position they sought. It’s true at most levels of elective office, but people who make it to Congress come to adore being there.

 

And little wonder. The pay is good, the benefits are great, and some of the perks are mind-boggling. Like free handy parking places at Washington’s main airports when flying back home at taxpayers’ expense. Once back home, of course, they vow to “roll up their sleeves” and get to work for you while spouting the word “jobs,” “jobs,” “jobs” wherever they appear. They never take a vacation because they’re working for you all the time. Hmmm.

 

And woe betide any male politician who doesn’t sport a flag lapel pin. This is in case some voter somewhere might think them unpatriotic. Plus, big flags must surround them whenever possible when they appear in public, presumably reminding voters what country they are citizens of, just in case they forgot.

 

Each Congress member gets upwards of $1 million to decorate their office and hire a staff. They are kowtowed to everywhere they go, especially in their offices by staff and lobbyists who visit all the time. It could make a person feel pretty important.

 

But there’s one pesky problem: Elections. U.S. House members have to face the voters every two years, which means they’ve got to be campaigning to stay in office for at least half that time, maybe more. And then there are those upstarts from back home who challenge them in the next election.

 

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said “All politics is local.” That statement is quoted all the time, and it’s largely true. But I say all politics is personal, and you can quote me on that.

 

It extends beyond Congress, but staying at that level, if you had a job you absolutely loved with great pay and benefits and people falling all over you and making you feel important and somebody tried to take it away from you, how would you like it?

 

Of course that’s true at the presidential level too. And they can’t hide the resentment of their challengers. There used to be such phenomena as “my worthy opponent” and “the loyal opposition” but that has long since disappeared, replaced by contempt and, I hate to say it, downright disdain.

 

Never have these things been more at play than in this election. This is the first time that an election has actually seemed scary to me. This strange Halloween will be well over by election day on Tuesday, but will the election be over after election day? You wonder.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Happy Halloween!

Introducing our Heffernan Family Jack O'Lantern Face, 

adeptly carved tonight by our son and his sons. 

It's a face carved by members of our Heffernan family 

over many generations and the tradition lives on. 

Happy Halloween to all!

Trick or treat, smell my feet...

By Jim Heffernan

First Captain Underpants book

Three of my grandchildren – boys ranging in age from 3 to 5 – are getting geared up for Halloween, it should go without saying. It’s a great observance for that age group, when ghosts really do exist, and goblins…well…I’m not really sure what goblins are myself. But they go with ghosts, that’s for sure.

The older two of these three children, twins, are in kindergarten now, where the real world outside their own home exists with all of its variety. Accordingly, they are learning through their new friends certain Halloween sayings that have not been part of their own Halloween upbringing.

Thus, they have adopted, or at least mentioned, a new phrase for begging for candy on Halloween night: “Trick or treat, smell my feet.” They have taught this to their younger brother, of course, one of the benefits, or liabilities, of being the youngest.

Really, what is the world coming to? “Trick or treat, smell my feet.” Is nothing held sacred these days?

Their parents have admonished them for such a vulgar utterance, and we – their paternal grandparents – have warned them that their neighbors might not give out the goodies if the boys beg with that slogan, but to not-much avail.

“Trick or treat, smell my feet” apparently tickles the children’s funny bone, the way Captain Underpants captured the imaginations of children long ago – around 2004, before these boys were born, certainly – but yesterday in the minds of horror-stricken grandparents of that ancient era.

Speaking of which (ancient eras, not Captain Underpants), I had my day in the harvest moon of past Halloweens, trick or treating through my childhood neighborhood. But we were GOOD children. No smell my feet. Certainly no Captain Underpants, or, if you will, the Bionic Booger Boy. Good, you won’t.

We were enamored of Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, and his ilk, and look how well we ran the country once we grew up.

Our saying at the doors we called on for candy way back in my childhood was not marginally vulgar like today’s, but rather only mildly threatening to donors’ homes (actually non-donors’ homes). We shrieked, “Trick or treat (OK, so far), soap or eats.” Yes, “Trick or treat, soap or eats.”

Just think how clean cut we were in those days. Begging for soap on Halloween. Unfortunately, the soap was not for personal hygiene (we weren’t THAT goody two shoes). It was a threat that if they didn’t dish out the candy, we would soap their windows. Smearing dry soap on windows is an irritant, forcing the resident to wash those windows sometime before the hard freeze or Christmas, whichever comes first.

It was an empty threat, though. We didn’t even carry soap, except for one year when we targeted the home of a really nasty neighbor who wouldn’t even answer the door on Halloween and chased us out of his yard on every other day if we trespassed.

He would not forgive us our trespasses, just as we did not forgive his, come Halloween. So we soaped him. But it might surprise some to learn that a bar of dry soap, say 99 and 44 one hundredths percent pure Ivory, doesn’t really make very good marks on windows at all. We should have used Fels Naptha.

Growing up, I longed for the old days of Halloween pranks described by my parents, the most prominently mentioned being the tipping over of outhouses. There were plenty of outhouses in Duluth in the 1920s and, I’m sure, ‘30s. I have it on very good authority that there were still 900 outhouses in Washington, D.C., in 1939, the year I as born, and adopting the role of Major Diaper.

By the time I aged a bit and made it to the Halloween rounds, though, there were no outhouses in our neighborhood to tip over, so we made do with soap, which we used only that once. I’m a Halloween prankster failure, looking back on it.

Back in the future, I look forward to seeing these three grandsons on Halloween, and hope their parents have persuaded them to beg with something other than “Trick or treat, smell my feet.” Or if they do, I hope their neighbors will forgive them their trespasses, just as we forgive those who trespass against us. Well, almost always. On Sundays at least. And All Saints’ Eve.