Halloween In The Hood

Halloween over the years has gone though many changes.  I think it is amusing that it is the only holiday that some people HAVE to tell you, "I don't celebrate Halloween".  Halloween started as either a Roman feast of Pomona the goddess of fruits and seeds OR a Celtic festival of Samhain which celebrated the end of summer. My husband and I saw something on TV last year called A Haunted History of Halloween.  It was very interesting.  However in this day and age there are a lot of folks who do not celebrate Halloween for one reason or another.  In Oak Cliff that is not the case.

When we were growing up in Oak Cliff,  Halloween was the best holiday next to Christmas.  What other holiday can you go around to homes and people just give you candy?  I remember those store bought costumes they started selling when I was about 8.  They came in nice neat boxes which I thought were very organized but when I looked at them closely they all looked cheap, and they were.  I decided that I would always make most of my own costume and that I would NEVER wear one of those masks that look like a flattened version of the character we were trying to portray.  About a week before Halloween my friends and I would decide at whose house we were going to meet and where we were going to go trick or treating.  There were also school carnivals during the month of October that featured haunted houses.  I remember helping my parents change one portable at Rosemont into a place of horror.  It was such fun working with my parents and seeing the creation of a haunted house.   As a teacher now I cannot even imagine my room being taken over for this kind of event.  The school sold cakes and candies with spiders and ghosts.  We played games and got real gold fish as prizes.  My dad always said he thought Coomb's Creek was filled with fish from Rosemont's carnivals.  Halloween and October in general was magical.  We used our imaginations and faced our fears.

Then came the poisoned candy.  There were stories popping up all over about children being poisoned by tainted candy.  Other stories told of razor blades hidden inside apples.  People all over America freaked out and started refusing to let their children trick or treat. This media blitz affected Oak Cliff too.  However, we just had more rules than before.  We could only go to homes where we knew the people; our parents had to check the candy and we could not keep any candy that was not wrapped.  However, the spirit of Halloween was tarnished.  It felt like some of the magic was gone.  Years later it was revealed that there were only a couple of cases of poisoning.  One where a dad tried to poison his child and one where a child tried to poison himself for attention.  By the time all these facts came out we were in high school and the holiday had become an excuse for having another dance.

After I got married my husband and I realized that we both loved to dress up.  We started tracking down and going to ANY party where we could go to just to dress up and have fun.  Over the years we have worn many costumes and they have become more and more elaborate. Our friends Monty and Rodney have a party that we go to every year but this always falls the weekend before Halloween. We also found that Halloween had come back to Oak Cliff with a vengence.  Oak Cliff was getting a large Hispanic Catholic population that enjoyed the holiday.  It is so much like their Dias de los Muertos celebration. We were overjoyed that we could now be the adults who gave out candy!  Yet we were determined not to be the little old lady or man who came to the door.  We decided to scare them too.  So with my brother's help we staged elaborate porch productions featuring double and sometimes triple scares.  I swear we smelled pee sometimes.

About 10 years ago we moved to Winnetka Heights.  We bought a very old house that just looked spooky from the get go.  A friend of ours would not stay in the house for any length of time because he said if felt creepy.  We also discovered from the former owner that a girl had died here in the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919.  We have never seen anything but we loved playing up the spookiness of the place.  People around Oak Cliff also enjoy decorating their homes.  Every year we see more and more decorations popping up around the area.  We love to see the creativeness that people show.  What about the trick or treaters?  Well their numbers have increased to an amazing point.  We have one of those VERY large containers that we fill twice with candy.  We give out just ONE piece per child and by the end of the night we are out of candy.  We give good candy not cheap stuff.  It cost us a small fortune but it is worth it to sit on the porch every Halloween night and watch the parade of children and their parents.  It is heart warming to see older siblings refuse candy for themselves when they are taking the young ones around.  It is amusing to see grown adults in costumes out walking around.  AND it is GREAT that our whole block participates in this celebration.  It is like a great block party each and every Halloween.

I can not think of a better place to spend Halloween than in Oak Cliff.  People here know how to celebrate this holiday right!

Yard Art?

As we have been walking we have run across some odd yard "art".  Now these items we find are not the cutesy little items people find at craft fairs.  You will not see a cow with a sprinkler tail, a plywood fat lady/man picking weeds or wooden ducks with propeller wings. Here in Oak Cliff those items are few and far between I am happy to say.  We have our own unique way of expressing what we think art is.  For us this is far more interesting than any mass produced craft project.  The three photos above are great examples of Oak Cliff's creative voice.

This picture was taken early one morning on a quite busy street.  It was an old trophy that had been taken apart and stuck a top a 5 foot pole.  The pole was right against the chain link fence that was bordering the property.  As we passed I immediately stopped and took a picture.  I would like to think this represent someone's pride at an accomplishment. However when we went back a few weeks later the object was moved to another spot in the front yard.  So maybe it was just a toy or maybe in was performance art.

This picture was taken on another busy street.  The yard was filled with cars in all stages of working condition.  There were garbage cans, weeds and a basketball hoop in other parts of the yard but the area immediately surrounding this sculpture was pristine and clean.  It also had its own makeshift base.  I think it is a image from a Greek myth but I could not tell which one.  This was a take the picture and run shot.  There were dogs in the yard and even behind a fence I did not want to stay around and chat.  I just thought the contrast of this sculpture that you might find in a European country estate and the surroundings it was in was great.

This last picture was the most original one I have ever seen.  This was taken on another busy street.  I think I am seeing a trend here.  As we came down the connecting side street we noticed this basket hanging in a tree.  At first we thought there was some live animal in the cage.  Then as we got closer we thought it was something they had trapped and had died there.  My husband said, "If there is a real animal in there I am calling SPCA."  When we finally got close enough we discover that it was a stuffed gorilla.  We really could not believe our eyes. WHY would anyone put a stuffed gorilla in a cage, in a tree and in their front yard.  Oh they yard is covered with cinder block tiles.  I guess that is one way to not mow.  This place cracked us up!  When I up loaded it on Facebook my friends were just as amused.

• Michael: What the heck is it?
• Sara: ummm.....stuffed monkey in a cage?
• Dixie: interesting
• Alison: They change things around in the cage. But I have never seen a real animal in there. Thank goodness :)

You would never see something like this in other parts of Dallas.  Life would be so boring without the Cliff. :-)