Why Don’t You Just Shut Your Big Yapper ~ Halloween 2020 with Bruce Hilliard
The script: It’s Halloween 2020, a year to remember indeed. Welcome to the Better Each Day podcast. Trick or treat, from six feet, throw the candy to the street. I’m Bruce Hilliard and I approve this message.
Set your clocks back, wear your mask, drink your Ovaltine and wash your junk.
This year is fraught with fright. Los Angeles won both the NBA Championship and the World Series but the LA fans weren’t allowed to attend the games. Only cut outs and a select few.
Dressing up in costumes was once a way to hide from ghosts. The tradition originated as a way for the Celtic and other European people to hide from the spirits who returned at this time of year. People wore masks when they left their homes after dark so the ghosts would think they were fellow spirits. This year there’s a world of masked people everywhere. The ghosts are thinking they’re at Comic-Con.
Halloween falls on a blue moon. Okay, a blue moon in the Northern Hemisphere but that’s okay for the sake of my point since Halloween is celebrated only in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first full moon of this month fell on October first. It was the Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon, or full moon nearest the September equinox. This month will have a second full moon, which – by popular decree – shall be called a Blue Moon. It’ll come on October 31 which is the night of Halloween.
There won’t be another blue moon on Halloween for another 19 years. The next time the blue moon will be on Halloween will be in the year 2039.
Even scarier is the presidential election. In a few days there will be votes followed by accusations of fraud and blame. Blame never results in progress but that’s what fuels our candidates narratives.
One Halloween in about 1959...When I was four my mom took an old sheet, cut out some eye holes and dressed me up as a ghost. She dropped me off with some strangers in the basement of our church and left me with a thousand other kids dressed as hobos and witches.
We played a game that involved closing our eyes and being spun around by one of the grown up 13-year-old girls. When I opened my eyes I couldn’t see anything but white sheet.
I started to wander. I found a wall to use as a guide and after a minute or two of feeling my way around I heard a door close and there I was in darkness.
The next day they found me in the coat closet.
That was an excerpt from Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds from an October 30th 1938 radio show, the original fake news. It caused mass hysteria and inspired journalists to this very day.
By request, a song I recently wrote about Saturday nights...a girl that wants to go where the other kids are going...the local Saturday night dance shootout. She puts on best jeans, checks herself out in the mirror...all systems go except...Your Momma Won’t Let You Go.
Well, trick or treaters are a knockin’. I’m going to the door to look at their innocent little masked faces, remind them to remain six feet away from everything, wash their hands, wear a seatbelt, eat your broccoli, don’t run with scissors, take your Flintstone vitamins, look both ways before crossing the street, if a freak on the street grabs you scream like Hell, don’t bet on slow horses and above all, have a happy Halloween 2020. They only come once in a blue moon.
