If it’s Halloween, it must be “Rocktober!”

Oh Boy! It’s that time of year. Fall! Yippee! My absolute favorite season out of all of them. 

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I love the leaf color changes, the earthy fermented smell that seems to permeate the air, the welcome morning chill after hot summer days, the glorious food, pumpkin carving, Trick o’ Treat candy, pecan and pumpkin pie for dessert. God,  I love it all.

I especially love the month of October. Or if you grew up in the Bay Area you called it “Rocktober” since that’s what the local Disc Jockeys out of San Jose called October back then.

Rocktober kicks off the Holiday Season and for kids everywhere this is the beginning of what we have been waiting for all year long. Time off from School and “Stuff.” 

And when I say “Stuff” I am referring to Goodies, Presents, Loot. Things you have been dreaming of getting your mitts on for an entire year. It’s all within hands reach because Christmas is not far away.

Most kids actually start to Behave around this time of year because…well ya know – Santa is always checking to see who has been Naughty or Nice.

Now while most children look forward to Christmas, it was Halloween that really got me excited. 

Thanksgiving was cool, but the rather staid occasion never really floated my boat.

Don’t get me wrong – Turkey with all the fixings was a welcome break from having to eat Hamburger Helper all the time at home but you didn’t get presents or candy or any of the good stuff that came with Christmas or Halloween.

But like I was sayin’ Halloween really got me where I lived and I am going to tell ya why.

It wasn’t just getting candy or the Trick o’ Treating. No, it was a whole month of really cool happenings that started as soon as Rocktober 1st hit the calendar.

I remember back when I was a 4th-grade student at Louise Vander Meer grade school we all got to order books out of a catalog.

By the time mid-October came around – so did the books. We’d all bring our little envelopes filled with jingling change and crisp one-dollar bills and my homeroom teacher, Mrs. King would hand us our little pile of purchased books.

Being a Ghost Story Nut, most of my ordered books were Ghost Story Collections.

One of the books I ordered had a story about a ghost of a murdered Peddler who took his bloody revenge on his murderer.

While I don’t remember all the details of the plot – the story scared the crap out of me and instilled a phobia of “Traveling Salesmen” from that point on. 

My Mom could never figure out why I’d go into hysterics whenever she asked me to answer our front door, especially at night – cause I was too ashamed to tell her.

Yep,  I was afraid it might be “The Bloody Peddler” knocking on our door – so forget it!

Local TV networks really amped up its Horror Movie programming and back in the 1960s, Vincent Price ruled supreme. For the whole month of Rocktober, we got to watch classic Horror Movies like “The Tingler, ” “The Last Man on Earth, ” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “House on Haunted Hill.” 

Although “House on Haunted Hill” was my absolute favorite, I could never handle the ending.

As soon as that skeleton emerged from the acid bath – I was changing the channel as fast as my little fingers could switch the TV set dial.

Class parties became the norm during Rocktober and at Louise Vander Meer that meant we got to eat candy without getting hollered at by our teachers during class time which was a real treat. 

My favorite candy was Kandy Korn, an orange and yellow colored waxed candy concoction made to resemble corn kernels.

  I used to gobble this stuff by the fistful. I’d eat so much of Korn candy I’d often leave tacky orange fingerprints all over my class books and papers. Mrs. King was not amused having to grade all my sticky papers.

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Another candy favorite was those Wax Fangs filled with red or green Kool-Aid.

They were fun to wear in class as you could make faces at kids when the teacher wasn’t looking. 

Now I was highly suspicious that these wax jobbers were not filled with punch or “Kool-Aid” as the manufacturer claimed because some of them glowed in the dark.

So God knows what was in them? They looked downright radioactive to me. 

Still, they were a blast to goof around with and eat after you got tired of wearing them. You wear ’em, bite ’em and drink the Kool-Aide. If you liked wax candy you ate the fangs too.

With Halloween in the offing that meant Costumes. Most Kids usually got those chintzy drug store nylon and plastic get-ups you could buy for a couple of bucks at the local five and dime. 

If you were a girl your choices were Tinkerbell, Cinderella or Snowwhite. (Kinda boring if you ask me) If you were a boy – you could be Dracula, Frankenstein, or Wolfman for the night. 

This Trifecta of Monsterdom costumes sold like hotcakes at the local Rexall Pharmacy whenever Rocktober rolled around. 

My Mom always made our Costumes at home and she made some really great ones let me tell ya.

One year she made this super cool Mr. Hyde costume for me.  I wore a large fright wig, green face paint, gnarly fangs, a cape, and a top hat. My costume was so good I almost won first prize at a local Halloween Costume Judging Contest.

Back then, Halloween Trick O’ Treating was a lot different. As soon as it was dark you were turned loose alone or with your friends to terrorize and pillage the local neighborhood.

As long you were home by 9 – 930 pm no one worried. Only the little kids had parental escorts and they usually did their Trick O’ Treating before it got dark anyway.

Where I lived in Santa Clara County the local neighborhoods went all out in decorating their homes to look as Spooky as possible.

Homes sported graveyards, creepy dungeons, and haunted houses. One house, in particular, had a large cauldron with a Witch who would reach into her bubbling pot and hand out candy to us terrified kids.

By 9 pm, our voices hoarse from shrieking “Trick O’ Treat!” a thousand times and our paper bags bursting with candy We’d trudge home. To figure out if we had scored any good stuff.

Once home I’d sit on my bed and divide my scored goodies into three piles.

The first pile would be my favorites – Snickers, Paydays, Mr. Good Bars, Mars Bars – basically, any candy that had nuts in it.

The second pile would include – Bit O’ Honeys, 3 Musketeers, Butterfingers, Kit Kats, and Mounds Bars.

The last pile had the weird stuff  – 3 Layer Candies, Jaw Breakers, Swizzle Sticks, lollipops, homemade stuff and Suckers.

I’d hide my favorite candy bars in my dresser and then hand the rest over to my Mom – just for “Safe Keeping.”

But wouldn’t you know it? 

Every year, no matter how carefully I stashed my goodies, “The Candy” would mysteriously disappear and no one would admit to touching my stuff.

Because anybody in my family could have taken it – I never actually solved the Mystery of the Stolen Candy Bars.

But, I had my suspicions.

You see I had found clues.

Clues that indicated the answer to the mystery lay amongst the candy wrappers I found in my parent’s waste paper basket.

Finis

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