Alan's First Halloween (Aged 49 1/2)

Candy, Chaos, Spaghetti, and Costumes

It was sometime around 2007, and we were in San Francisco. It was Halloween.

San Francisco is the best place for Halloween: the celebrations are glorious and fantastic, especially in the Castro District. (Some say that every day is Halloween in The Castro, or could be if you wanted it so).

I always felt that Halloween was San Francisco’s national holiday, if SF was a nation. Everyone is in costume, from Muni drivers to the medical teams at the hospitals, from shops’ assistants to business associates, teachers, tech people, whoever and wherever: costume time! A gorilla going up an escalator? Whats unusual about that, on 31 October.

This was to be husband Alan's first Halloween. Usually that sort of sentence is uttered about a small child. But my British husband, Alan, had never fully experienced Halloween (at the time it wasn’t a British thing; now it is). Anyhow: There we were.

I had been regaling Alan with stories of children in costumes, wandering down the street with houses transformed into cemeteries and haunted houses, with little ballerinas, ogres and spacemen trailing parents wrapped up in sheets or otherwise embarrassing gear. In other words, a good ol' American Trick or Treat. Old school.

My colleague at the SF Chronicle, Kim Severson (now with NY Times), who lived in the East Bay at the time, invited us to come along with her to her old neighbourhood in Berkeley’s Flatlands. "But" she sternly instructed us: "You must come in costume".

We were going celebrate the holiday and trick or treat with a sweet family going through a sad time: father and two children, with a big empty space where their mother had been (she died the year before; it was their first halloween without her). I thought: if it is important to me for Alan to have a good first Halloween, it is even more important for this little family to have a good evening, a few hours to lighten their hearts and lift their spirits.

We vowed to be as festive as we could; hence the costume requirement. We needed to gather up as much joy as we could for them.

But choosing a costume was already the first obstacle. There was trouble in the ranks; Alan was not going to dress up. As I said, he's from Britain where gents might don ladies' frocks at the drop of a hat, but they never dress up as vampires. I tried to explain things to Alan as I cajoled and wheedled and begged to get him into a costume. "It is crucial", I said. "I'm not dressing up like a pumpkin!" he retorted. "Or a Warlock!" he seemed a bit hysterical: I was worried he was ready to walk.

Then he thought about the little family, the children looking forward to having an evening of costumes and candy and frivolity. "We'll go", he said "and have fun! I’ll dress up in whatever you want me to”.

Arms filled with bags of candy--pumpkin salt-water taffy chews, hot cinnamon jelly-bears, black and orange m and ms, itty bitty Sees chocolates, fun sized everything--we knocked on the door. Eight year old Isabel opened the door and peered out...gray-circled eyes, white makeup, long black gown, red lips…a tiny vampire!

She reached through the door and pulled us in."Where is your costume?"she demanded. While I had finally managed getting Alan to agree (in theory) to dressing up--Isabel meant business. She looked us over and began rummaging through a large chest filled with costumes. "You can't go out without a costume" she said matter of fact-ly, "here, lets put one together!"

Alan immediately found a huge hat, mad hatter style, made arm and leg holes in a big pumpkin garbage bag, and climbed in, all 5’ 3”and 3/4 of him. He looked like a very eccentric English pumpkin. It was perfect.

In the chest of treasures, I found a headband, adorned in scores of flower petals; when I put it on my head I looked like a big flower with a Marlena face. I loved myself in it! Isabel looked at me with tears in her eyes: "My mother wore that one" she said.

I was panicked; my heart was breaking for this child; I should take the headband off right away…and then disappear into thin air? Anything to not make this child hurt. But then, Isabel added: "I'll go get a photo of her in it, I want you to see her. She looked so beautiful; I want you to wear it this time!”

Once we were fully adorned, Damien, the dad, arrived home with 3 year old little brother. We got to fixing dinner--goblins can't go out trick or treatin' if they don't have a nice layer of real, healthful food priming their digestion first—grown ups were very clear about this. The children were agreeable, but Alan was balking. “Why? Why this crazy American rule? There’s candy out there, lets just get ourselves to it and eat ourselves silly!” Such a bad example for the kids!

Since Halloween is known to attract vampires, to be safe while we were out and about, I made little pouches of garlic for each of us--a scrap of gaily coloured cloth wrapped around a clove of garlic, and hung necklace-like around each neck.

I thought we should eat eat something with lots of garlic; one can never be TOO careful when you’re talking vampires. I put the water up for the spaghetti and warmed a zillion cloves of garlic in olive oil with pumpkin; for the sauce. We sat down to eat.

After sucking up a bit of oily garlicky spicy spaghetti—literally sucking the strands up loudly, like they were squiggly worms, all of us not just the little ones—the doorbell started ringing. We jumped up excitedly from the table, started handing out candy and soon hit the street ourselves. We were gathering up a Halloween gang: Pumpkin Alan, sunflower Marlena, our Canadian friend who went as Captain Canada, red tights, hockey stick, his cape a Canadian flag with big red maple leaf, and various unidentifiable, indescribable, stuff. On Halloween you can wear anything!

It was taking Alan awhile to get the concept of "trick or treat". He watched the kids for awhile, then said: "Oh, I get it-- if they don't give us candy we can play a trick on them!" His eyes gleamed brightly as only a Brit's can when faced with the possibility of total chaos. I told him: "Calm down, its not extreme tricks, mostly just a bit of toilet paper strewn through the trees" His face drooped slightly--until the first house that is: the kids went up, the kids came back with lots of candy and kindly, generously, offered us a piece.. Alan LOVES candy.

We meandered up the hill, ringing bells door to door; the houses grew bigger and fancier as we reached the higher altitudes, and the treats grew better. By now, grownups were in the streets, too, in costumes of course. The streets were full of Harry Potters, black cats, witches on broomsticks, mermaids, even the occasional Osama bin Laden and George Bush (this was pre-Obama). Grown-ups answered their door in costume, front yards were decorated with fake graves, scary skeletons, and pumpkins galore; twinkling orange lights were strung out across the fronts of houses; at at least one, flickering candles lit the way up creaky, squeeky stairs.

By now the kids’ treat bags were so full they could barely carry them. Alan, of course, kindly offered to help lighten their load (and have a rummage inbetween houses). Isabel offered Kim a butterfinger and Kim got such a taste for it that at the next house she called up loudly from the street to the front door: "Got any Butterfingers?" The grownups were so—surprised? taken aback?—they ran inside and returned with big Butterfingers. I think it was from their own stash rather than the tiny fun-sized ones for giving away.

The evening felt wild; like anything could happen, and it would be good, only good. And for a short while no one felt pain, life almost felt like fun again; the kids were sharing their candy, stopping for a street nibble before heading to another house for more. Alan was convinced that Halloween is the best thing ever.

And as if central casting wanted to prove his point: on the way home, driving through San Francisco along Divisidero, we saw a six-feet tall white rabbit waiting for a Muni bus. I think it was for Halloween. But one never knows: it could have just been a normal, ordinary night on the streets of SF. A normal, ordinary night with a 6 foot tall rabbit waiting for the bus, and a lot of free candy.

Anti-Vampire Spaghetti with Ten Cloves of Garlic, a Hit of Hot Pepper, and Slices of Pumpkin Squash

Serves 4-6

10-15 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

Several pinches red chile flakes

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, or as desired

12-16 oz winter squash (ie pumpkin type orange flesh such as kabocha, hubbard, etc), peeled and thinly sliced

1 lb spaghetti

Salt to taste

Put a large pot of water on the stove to heat.

Meanwhile, warm about half the garlic with the chile flakes in the olive oil over a medium low heat. Take care that the fumes from the hot peppers don't irritate your eyes; I always need to open the window to heat chiles in oil for this reason. Add squash and cook together, stirring or turning, as it cooks. When just tender, remove from stove and set aside.

When water comes to the boil, add the spaghetti and salt; cooking pasta takes more salt than you'd think, and more water too. Make sure its a BIG pot of water, and add about 2 teaspoons of salt (you'll be draining it away when the pasta is cooked). When pasta is half cooked, still hard in its center, add the broccoli and finish cooking together.

When spaghetti is on the firm side of al dente; drain and reserve about 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid. Toss the drained pasta and the pumpkin and its garlic-chile oil, and add the reserved raw chopped garlic. Toss well and add a few spoonfuls of the reserved cooking water, shaking the pan over a medium heat, adding a few more spoonfuls of water as you go.

To complete your menu in the black and orange Halloween theme: put black grapes and mango chunks on top of your salad leaves, and toss with a slightly spicy tangy dressing. And for dessert: if you’re not trick or treating yourself, why not indulge in a nice big bowl of orange and black m and ms?