Childhood Halloween by Jodie Pierce

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, even as a child and even over Christmas. There has just been something special about being able to dress up and take on someone or something else’ persona for a night. It’s mystical, magical and shrouded in a cloud of intrigue. Also, for the children, it’s a blast if done right and they’re not badly scared at an early age. The idea of getting to put on a fun costume or dress up like their favorite cartoon and get free candy is more exciting than their little hearts could wish for in one evening.

I have always been a Daddy’s girl and this was holiday we almost exclusively shared. Mom was content to sit at home and pass out the candy for she didn’t like the walking. Dad was more of the walker with me and we did a lot of it from the time I was little all the way up into my adulthood would we go on short walks. Mom was more the crafty, creative person where dad sometimes lacked in that department so the two of them together usually rocked out my Halloweens. I never, in my life, had a store bought costume which had its good points and bad points. At least no one had the same costume that I did however, I never got to be the girls with fancy dresses or cartoon characters. However, I was unusual things. I was a bag of jelly beans with colored balloons inside a clear garbage bag. I was a domino from an old washer box we taped together and we cut it too long so I could barely get up the steps to the houses. I was a bum and used the old burning a wine bottle cork to get the blackened “dirty” look. My mom had made me a costume earlier that year for my school’s Wizard of Oz Parade for the Fourth of July and I was the Lion so I just recycled that costume for Halloween that year.

My favorite however, and the one that sticks out in my mind the most was one that Dad and I did all the work on it together. Dad worked with leather and sold it on the side of his everyday job to supplement their income, (mom was a stay-at-home-mom) so they needed the help. He and I made our costumes out of leather and suede, we hammered designs into it and painted it, we