A Peek at Zeke: Halloween

Ok, I know that this post is two weeks late, but I’ve had some issues getting pictures and video off my IPhone and I really wanted to have those before I blogged about it. This year I really got into Halloween, I mean really into it. You see, I finally did some upgrades to the house, and for the first time in the 7 years we’ve been here, I was able to decorate for Halloween because I got an outdoor power outlet installed the front of the house. (Can’t wait for Christmas, I’m gonna give Clarke Griswold a run for his money)

As a kid, I always loved Halloween. I have always enjoyed the imagery of a scary leafless tree against a moonlight background, the sound of the wind whistling through the baron branches, the crunching of the leaves on the ground as trick or treaters’ approached a house with a perfectly carved jack-o-lantern. It felt like a treat to be outside in the dark dressed up in a scary costume, sharing time with good friends. I was a shy kid and it took a couple of years for me to figure it out, but I finally realized how great Halloween was because I could hide behind a costume and become anyone I wanted to be and my shyness would melt away. My friends and I had many great Halloween adventures. Between the trick or treating, the awesome costume parties that my one friend’s parents threw, or hanging with the same kid's older brothers who would take us out way too late to go around scaring people, my buddies and I almost always had a blast.

But that ended when my one friend moved away when I was about 12. The neighborhood suddenly got very old and no one did anything for Halloween anymore. I just assumed that I had outgrown Halloween and that it was for little kids. But I still kept a few traditions, like taking a walk once it was dark to see if I could find a good local haunted house, then coming home to watch old black and white horror films. I never let the cool feeling of Halloween die, I just stopped celebrating it.

Now that I’m a dad with a four year old, I want my son to experience some of the cool things I got to see as a kid. Locally, we handle Halloween pretty well. All the neighborhood kids are close in age, so they all get dressed up and go out together. The community does a good job of getting people to participate in handing out treats, but no one is really into the scary decorating. Now I know that the kids are mostly between the ages of 3 and 6,and I’m not into traumatizing them with nightmares of ghouls, but come on people, put some bats or spiders out (I admit there were some good Jack-o-lanterns). Anyway, I went out and got a smoking bubble machine, made a small graveyard with a skeleton and a ghost, and our candy was distributed next to the evil mad scientist working on his next Frankenstein creation. I also said to myself that the kids didn’t need to be the only ones having fun, so I actually got dressed up as well. So here are some of the pictures from Zeke’s Halloween 2010.