Fond memories of a Halloween past

I was a skinny boy of 9 in October of 1970 when my family lived in the sleepy little town of West Redding, Conn.

The town hadn’t changed much since it was founded decades before the American Revolution. It was a place left by time to mellow like fine wine.

Even today the tiny hamlet nestled deep in New England, south of Danbury, looks like something Norman Rockwell imagined for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Gen. Putman fought off the British during the Revolution just outside of the town. Mark Twain spent his last years here at his estate called Stormfield. He was also the library’s principal patron and was the donor of many of its books.

The hills and meadows surrounding West Redding were lined with fieldstone fences built there by early settlers and farmers. It boasted a small town square, typical of New England towns. A small one-room schoolhouse alongside a lonely road just outside of town was turned into a mini museum after a modern school replaced it in the early 20th century.

The place names were right out of an old movie like Gallows Hill and Umpawaug Road, which had a cemetery that went back to 1690 bearing the same name. For a 9-year-old boy with a thing for history and ghost stories it was — pardon the pun — heaven-sent.

We had moved there earlier that summer from Ohio. We moved a lot in those days — three kids, myself and my two older sisters, Debbi and Donna three dogs and one half-crazed mom in a little blue VW bug. My dad worked as a regional sales executive. When he moved to a new region to work in, we would follow. This was the fifth of nine moves we made in an 11-year period. From New Bedford, Mass., to Seattle, Wash., we crossed the entire country. It was the best adventure and education for me growing up during the 1960s and ’70s.

Now, we didn’t go out and buy a costume for our Halloween fun. We made them, and since mom was a super den mother for Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts, we knew some pretty neat tricks to make Halloween truly fun.

When the leaves turned to the reds, ochre, orange and yellows that only a New England fall could bring. I thought of a doozy — I would be a robot, like from my favorite show, “Lost in Space.”

I found a packing box left from the move that was perfect for my small, skinny body. I cut holes in the sides for my arms and one on top for my head. I cut some flexible dryer hose for arms and attached them with staples and duct tape. I tapped an old broken reel-to-reel tape recorder to what would be the robot’s chest. I had an old style football helmet, the kind with no face guard made of thick plastic. My mother wasn’t thrilled when I used all of her aluminum foil to cover the solid blue helmet — and the rest of my robot creation.

My dad wasn’t happy either when he discovered I had used up all his staples and duct tape, too. But when they saw what their mad genius son had created, they only smiled and told me to ask first next time.

My sisters just thought I was nuts, and looking back across the years, they might have been right.

But for me — that boy of 9 — it was a perfect Halloween.

Fog rose off the pond across the street. A chill wind blew dead and dry leaves around on the ground. A clear sky brought out the best of the nearly barren tree limbs. The original “Frankenstein” was playing on TV. My sisters were dressed up as a hobo and Raggedy Anne. With the help of my mom I put on my creation.

Genius was an understatement. I failed to take account of the tape recorder’s weight. The whole thing fell forward and down, binding on the back of my neck. The helmet looked great, but was a tad tight on my head. The foil antennas fell off. It was bulky, and I could barely move my arms in dryer hoses with my jacket on. Perhaps I should never tried it on with my jacket first.

But with some help, my parents managed to pad my neck and gave us all a kindly push out the door into the night.

It was worse walking in the thing. Luckily, we were only working our street for tricks and treats. It was a short one with only 15 to 20 homes on a dead end, a quiet street off a quiet, lonely road surrounded by old forest just outside of town. It was really close to that old cemetery as well. There was no traffic to contend with, so the entire neighborhood was alive with little ghosts, fairies, witches, monsters and one foil-covered box posing as a robot. In spite of all those problems with my creation, I was having a blast as long as I walked slow.

We went house-to-house, knocking on doors yelling “trick or treat,” and sometimes with a mumbled “smell my feet.” Hey, we were kids.

The parents of one my sister’s friends had on a haunted house on our street. They were anxious to go there, with little old me trundling my way slowly behind them, barely able to hold onto my candy filled plastic pumpkin and flashlight. Well, I was just holding them back. I was only their weird little brother, made more so in that clunky, bulky silver box that really slowed them down for all their fun.

Still, we did stick together. We made it there in time for them to take part. I couldn’t because the bulk of the darned thing couldn’t make it through the door. I sat outside instead and really made a pig out of myself munching some candy treasures.

After they’d had their wits scared out of them, my sisters came out, picked up their robotic brother and slowly walked the short distance back to our home.

You know, I still look back to that time more than 40 years ago and chuckle. I did have a great deal of fun that night. I remember it to this day because of all the problems I had with that clunky mess I made out of scraps, cardboard, foil, and odds and ends. I wouldn’t have traded it for the fanciest costume in the world.

For a while I was a robot as only a child could make one with the power of his imagination and some bad engineering. Well, maybe not that bad …

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.