Guest Blogger: Halloween Costumes by Sweetie

My wife nicely made sugar cookies for me for Pack Meeting on Tuesday. Then she did sugar cookies again on Friday for Girl Scouts. After that much baking, she didn't make the cool pumpkin Rice Krispie thingy... which messed up everything and it's all my fault. So now I'm the guest blogger.

OK, a Halloween memory is the assigned topic. We went to the costume parade at the elementary school today. (On Friday... when Halloween is on Monday... lame...) but there were a few old-school homemade costumes that really showed some creativity. Those are always my favorites. Which brings me to my story.

When I was a kid, sometimes we got really cool hand-sewn costumes…like the little cheetah suit my mom made. I also remember all of us dressed up as a band of Indians. My brother had an amazing clown costume.

As we got older, the costumes were more likely to be made from whatever was lying around. When I was 7 or 8, I was tired of being a pirate or Indian and wanted to be something really scary for a change. I decided a mummy was just the ticket. The plan was simple, wrap and pin a torn up sheet to a white background. After some thought, my white thermal underwear was selected as the background.

I came downstairs in my white thermals (we called them long johns), and my mother started laughing and said she had a better idea. She went and got a piece of paper and pinned it to my back. She and my older sister where laughing hysterically while I stood there dumbfounded. So my costume was long johns with a sign... and it made people laugh. I wanted to be scary! But what choice did I have? Off I went.

My classmates thought my costume was lame. But as we walked down Main Street, I left a wake of adults laughing hysterically as I walked by and they saw the sign. It was the early 70s and there was a strange craze sweeping America from baseball games to parades to inaugurations. Audiences were gasping not at flash mobs, but something a bit more lonely and with way fewer clothes.

For those of you old enough to remember the old Ray Stevens’ song… fastest thing on two feet…
The sign my mother had stuck to my long johns and sent me parading around the school, down Main Street, and eventually trick-or-treating said simply, Alaskan Streaker.

No pictures exist of the actual costume and typing the word “streaker” into Google images didn't seem prudent. SO instead of pictures, here is Ray Stevens' version of the song.