What do pillowcases have to do with Halloween?

Remember when there was no curfew and you made such a haul on Halloween that you had to go home, dump it out, and start over? We used pillow cases because nothing else would have held up under the weight. I’m sure your neighborhood was fun, but Halloween back in the day on a military base was the bomb (excuse the pun)! Maybe it was the proximity of the people and how close one house or apartment building (Germany) was to each other; maybe it was the guilt the parents’ felt at schlepping you around every three years; or maybe it was that families tended to be large—the neighborhood was certainly safe—and just being able to harvest all night yielded something akin to a trash barge on the Hudson. The downside, in my family anyway, was there is no photographic evidence. There could be some grainy video, but God knows which relative is currently in possession of the y-e-a-r-s worth of family video.

Next to my birthday, Halloween was always my favorite holiday. I reveled in taking Josh trick-or-treating later, and it was his favorite holiday because it came just two days after his birthday. I think he thought it was all for him.

You can’t go out until Batman is ready.

Me and Cajun on the new deck in Alexandria. He’s was getting old there.