On a particularly scary Halloween night, I darkened our living room and turned on a radio to prepare to be scared out of my wits. Of course, my two older sons, 7 and 10 at the time, were part of the mix, as was the then-1-year-old, Ben, even if he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet follow the plot.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
A Highlands University journalism student, Joseph Von Rodeck, came up with a frightful radio script to a play that I thought would go over quite well with the Las Vegas audience. He invited me to be the narrator and selected other classmates and acquaintances to fill in the various roles.<\/p>\n
The original plan was to present the hour-long program live, but some question about logistics at KFUN-KLVF changed that: something about the size of the studio. So we put it on tape.<\/p>\n
At the appointed hour, on Halloween night, we tuned in. Now the radio we used was a huge outfit, about the size of a small train or large horse. The remarkable feature was that it had powerful bass speakers which would rival those of some cars we hear downtown. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hoped that would make the floor vibrate to deepen the effect.<\/p>\n
The boys knew only that they were supposed to get scared in the dark room; they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know their own dad was the narrator, trying to sound like E.G. Marshall, who narrated a Mystery Theater-type program every week, around that time, the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc80s.<\/p>\n
Would you believe that as much as people like to get scared, it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work on my sons? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are we scared yet?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d asked my older son, Adam. Diego, who always liked to play along, kept insisting that he really was scared throughout, but Adam later informed me that his younger sibling was merely trying to humor me. Adam explained that no matter how hard he closed his eyes and shivered, he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t force himself into a fright.<\/p>\n
And all this bravado after we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been careful to produce the scare-arama of the decade. At the studio we had inserted appropriate grunts and groans, screams and shrieks, to no avail.<\/p>\n
And why was that? Well, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voice just doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sound spooky.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The other rationale was, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If Dad weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in the room with us, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d probably be scareder.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Does anybody get frightened anymore? And a more relevant question might be, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why do people enjoy being scared?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As youngsters, when we would go to Halloween movies, we Trujillos came home with enough fright to satisfy our entire neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Part of my interest in taking part in Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s radio play came from speeches my late-afternoon class often delivered in late October, Halloween. Remember when there were the requisite kidnappings? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have it on good authority that tonight three people will be kidnapped: a child, a nun and a priest.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Beginning any statement with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have it on good authority\u00e2\u20ac\u009d virtually guaranteed a rise in the credibility quotient. Who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever going to question that? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost as credible as, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I understand this really happened.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Usually the source for that was a friend of a friend who swore he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d even witnessed the triple kidnappings.<\/p>\n
So who can argue with that logic?<\/p>\n
Of course, there are other things to scare people. My family used to love it when the trick-or-treat element of Halloween was a standard event. We all looked forward to knocking on the door of a Camp Luna neighbor, Jean Doyle, who must have planned the trick-or-treating months in advance.<\/p>\n
She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d adorn her front yard with spooks and goblins, and instead of our scaring Jean with our outlandish costumes (yes, I know, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard it many times before: Art doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need a mask to scare people), Jean set out to scare us. A prominent sign on her sidewalk warned us: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Come in or else.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Through our sons\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 growing-up years, trick-or-treating was an event we all looked forward to. In addition to escorting our own kids around the area, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d buy a large supply of treats, or else make popcorn balls, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d supply up to 100 kids.<\/p>\n
Once, we stocked up on 50-cent coupons for a fast-food restaurant and became instantly popular, in the years when 50 cents actually bought something. My children loved the yearly activity, but soon they outgrew it. Nowadays, we continue to buy treats for the tricksters, but people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to come around anymore.<\/p>\n
The last kid visitors we had, possibly as long as three years ago, were some we knew well, and whose parents returned the favor for our kids.<\/p>\n
The one time my siblings and I went through the ritual, along the mired streets of benighted Railroad Avenue, we scored big. One place, near Immaculate Conception School, featured soft-serve ice cream, which none of us had ever tasted.<\/p>\n
So ravenous were a couple of us that we actually switched masks and got served seconds an hour or two after the first visit. We generally stayed on our own turf, going only to houses where we were sure people knew us.<\/p>\n
But nowadays, unless I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m w-a-y off base, I suspect there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much of that going on. Not much, unless you happen to live around Legion Drive, Mountain View and Vegas Drive, where straight and well-lighted streets and sidewalks and welcoming residents make it easier for tricksters.<\/p>\n
We hear those houses really get the invasions, and whether the visitors are neighborhood kids or those from other areas, we can only speculate.<\/p>\n
I wonder if someone ought to organize a nonprofit group to subsidize some of the residents in those areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a particularly scary Halloween night, I darkened our living room and turned on a radio to prepare to be scared out of my wits. Of course, my two older sons, 7 and 10 at the time, were part of the mix, as was the then-1-year-old, Ben, even if he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet follow the plot. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}