Our Times with Tam Terrific: Halloween with Tammie

Cheryl Buranich as Batman, Tammie as Robin, Lori Nelk as Batgirl and Sherry Martin as the Penguin

With Halloween coming up again, I started to think of how excited we would get on that night. Over the years, my mother had collected all of these Halloween decorations and Tammie and I love to plaster them all over our picture window. My mom always seemed to make us wait until the 15th of October and then we would bring the boxes up from the basement (knowing the two of us, though, my mom probably carried them up herself). I imagine she made us wait until the 15th, so as to limit the amount of decorations that we could put around the house. Sorry mom, it didn't work.

One year, Tammie sent away for this giant plastic Frankenstein banner and we had to put all these glow-in-the dark thingys all over it. They were little sticky balls of felt or something and they made ol' Frankenstein glow in the dark. We also had this Igor-looking cardboard character that we could attach to a lampshade. The wacky cut-out came with a long string around one of its fingers and a spider dangled down from the string. We also had black cats, plastic pumpkins, bats, and a huge black rubber rat. Somewhere along the way, Tammie bought that rat (it may have come from my grandfather's store) and she loved to pull it out at Halloween and scare my mother. You would think after a few years, that my mom would realize that the rat only came out on April Fool's Day and Halloween. Fortunately for us, she didn't.

Every year, we would make a special trip to this farm in Warners to pick out a pumpkin. At first, my mom would only let us draw with permanent marker on the pumpkin. According to her, it had to be a permanent marker! Of course, she hated knives and was always thinking that we would stab each other. In later years, she finally relented and we made these awesome jack-o-laterns.

We had some great costumes, too. There is a picture of us sitting on our parent's front steps and Tam was dressed up as Snow White and I was portraying my favorite cartoon character, Casper the Friendly Ghost. Now, there was a guy who was misunderstood. He just wanted to be friends with everyone, but they kept running away! Come to think of it, I guess I can relate to that ghost. I suppose that's why I loved him so.

Tammie and I with the pumpkin covered with permanent marker

For most of the years, Tammie and I went trick or treating together or with friends from the neighborhood. Many of the people around our tract would give out the same thing every year. Mrs. Blount across the street gave out individual sticks of Juicy Fruit Gum and there was another house where the people handed out nickels to each kid ( a candy bar was ten cents at the time, so a nickel wasn't bad), Mr Eustace, a Shriner's Circus clown, would make these wonderful balloon animals, and we loved getting popcorn at the Dents and then again at the Sullivans. Once, the Dents added a little haunted house portion to their routine and we thought that was just great. Mrs. Forgan out back would make up a bag for us with full-size candy bars and we made a special trip to her home. Heck, I think Tammie was still stopping by there in high school.

When we would find our way home after a long night of ringing doorbells, we would finally get a chance to go through our loot. We were no fans of the Clark bar, Mounds, Mary Jane, or the infamous Zagnut (Do they still make those?), but we loved the Nestle Crunch bar, the $100,000 Bar, and the legendary Milky Way. My father seemed to like our castoffs, though, so everything worked out in the end.

As we got older, we stopped trick or treating together, but we continued going out with friends. Our costumes got more elaborate and I remember my mom making all sorts for me. Let's see there was a knight, a Planet of the Apes character, and an American colonial guy. At some point, we started going to Cooper's Decorating in Syracuse and buying these awesome rubber masks to add to our finely sewed garments.