Halloween 1976

My own kids and the monster outside the door


It's become a family tradition. Filling up bags of leaves and dressing them in clothes. Topping it all off with a horrible mask. Then posting the monster in just the right place to make passers by look twice.

We've posted ours by the door.





Dad posted his on the fire escape ladder of our Guilford Connecticut saltbox. It would cling there between the 2nd and 3rd floor for several weeks not far enough from Lansing's window.
Clearly Dad was more interested in this kind of mischievousness than carving pumpkins as he stated in a letter to Lansing in 1976:


I had to go draw a face on Amanda's pumpkin. Then I had to clean out Amanda's pumpkin. Then I had to carve the face on Amanda's pumpkin. How come it's AMANDA's pumpkin and not MINE I'd like to know?



Then, of course, Saint wanted me to carve his. I told him he was goddam well old enough to carve his own pumpkin and the only way a father gets practice enough to carve a 6-year old daughter's pumpkin is by spending 40 goddam years carving them!



<---Saint at about 12
and old enough to carve his own goddam pumpkins

Amanda at about 6 years old (ABOVE)

I think Dad tried to make things sound just a bit less rosy than they were. He didn't want Lansing, who was living with our mother, to feel like she was missing out.