Halloween is coming

Halloween is almost here. The decorations are going up and because the holiday falls on a Tuesday most of the adult parties will this Saturday night.  

As you can see one of my neighbors is in the holiday spirit. This reminded me of an old favorite song Phantom 309 which both a ghost story and sad ballad. I remember hearing this song for the first time, late at night on the car radio. I was on a dark road near Pittsfield Massachusetts and had at 4 hours of driving ahead of me.

The original version, written and performed by Red Sovine. Red had a long career in Country & Western music where many of his songs depicted life on the road and the experiences of long haul truckers. He also helped Charlie Pride break into the Country & Western music scene back in the day when African-American performers were extremely rare in Nashville.

So what is Halloween? There are several evangelical churches in my area that denounce the holiday but two local towns have Halloween parades for the kids. In America people spend more on Halloween than any other holiday except Christmas.

Not long after graduating college I keep in contact several fellow alumni. They were still living in a big old house that rented the bedrooms out separately, it was cheap place to live that catered to college students. One of the new roommates was Kumar, though we all called him Q. Q studied hard, graduated and he planned to go back to Iran until he received a fateful phone call from his parents in Terran.

It was the middle of the Iran-Iraq War and Q's draft notice arrived at his parents house. It was the worst all possible situations. If Q went back he would most likely sent to the front where death was close to certain. If he did not answer his draft notice in 30 days there would be an order issued for his execution.

We all immediately realized Q's best chance for survival was staying here in America. Several months of anxiety later, Q was on the road to becoming an citizen. It was October  and Q said if this is going to become my new adopted country then I want to really be an American -so what's the deal with Halloween?

In a way it was like a Sacha Baron Cohen routine. Explaining to Q the pagan roots of the holiday, how the early Christian Church co-oped the celebration to gain converts, and that the whole evolved in to a day when kids dress up in costumes of monsters, vampires and scary things so they can go door to door and beg for candy. The whole time Q's eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger as he repeated "no, you're kidding me".

A couple of weeks later we took Q to his first Halloween party. That night he looked at me and said "I can't believe you, you drink like a Turk". A few years later I was to find out exactly what Q meant -but that's another story.