Halloween in Minnesota
Every year, it was an ordeal to not only brainstorm the perfect Halloween costume idea, but also to make sure that idea was big enough to fit a bulky winter jacket under it. This was, of course, back before all of the slick WalMart ready-made options of today. If we wanted ready-made, we got the old style, plastic mask with a flimsy elastic string and barely enough room to breathe through the tiny hole cut for the mouth. It's truly a wonder that more children didn't pass out and freeze to death while huffing over snow banks as the wind howled relentlessly. This old school costume of the 1970s also came with the accompanying colored equivalent of a trash bag, pre-stamped to be the character of your choice.
Being rather lower-middle class, my family opted for homemade ideas, put together from things we already owned, often found in the garage (cardboard boxes, random hoses, and old cottage cheese containers, to name a few). Though it did not entail the previously mentioned apparatus, princess was an old standby for my elementary school self. Unfortunately, it was extremely hard to layer effectively in a pink chiffon dress, and I often ended up looking like Tinkerbelle lost in the Arctic with my huge, orange, puffy, 70s, winter coat worn over the dress.
You see, the key is to find a costume under which the huge, orange, puffy, 70s, winter coat can be worn virtually undetected. My brother was exceptional at this. My favorite costume of his was a giant Coca-Cola machine (made from nearly all of the above mentioned recycled items), under which he wore a snowsuit! All the kids in the neighborhood were envious of his extraordinarily stealthy layering technique. He was always better adapted to Minnesota weather than I. Perhaps that's why he still lives there, and I looked for sunnier shores.
All day today, the kids on my block in San Francisco have been parading by in their costumes. I have seen many a pink, chiffon princes... and none of them had on jackets of any kind. If only they knew how lucky they were.
Being rather lower-middle class, my family opted for homemade ideas, put together from things we already owned, often found in the garage (cardboard boxes, random hoses, and old cottage cheese containers, to name a few). Though it did not entail the previously mentioned apparatus, princess was an old standby for my elementary school self. Unfortunately, it was extremely hard to layer effectively in a pink chiffon dress, and I often ended up looking like Tinkerbelle lost in the Arctic with my huge, orange, puffy, 70s, winter coat worn over the dress.
You see, the key is to find a costume under which the huge, orange, puffy, 70s, winter coat can be worn virtually undetected. My brother was exceptional at this. My favorite costume of his was a giant Coca-Cola machine (made from nearly all of the above mentioned recycled items), under which he wore a snowsuit! All the kids in the neighborhood were envious of his extraordinarily stealthy layering technique. He was always better adapted to Minnesota weather than I. Perhaps that's why he still lives there, and I looked for sunnier shores.
All day today, the kids on my block in San Francisco have been parading by in their costumes. I have seen many a pink, chiffon princes... and none of them had on jackets of any kind. If only they knew how lucky they were.
posted by Bert at 2:01 PM
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