Boogies

Every year when the air starts getting a little crisper and the leaves start falling I get an unmistakable feeling of excitement knowing that Halloween is just around the corner. Halloween was a big deal in my house as a kid. There is nobody who liked scaring the literal excrement out of children more than my father did. Certainly, he had no problem scaring his own kids whenever he could, jumping out of closets with masks on, or locking us in them. Halloween was different. It was better. He got to scare everyone’s kids on that day.

In the days leading to Halloween, most people go out and carve a pumpkin with their family and roast the seeds and laugh. We were forced to sit in a sweatshop assembly line in our living room constructing one of the main props for our Halloween display. “Boogies”. “Boogies” is short for “Boogeymen” and preparations for these props lasted all year. In its basic form, a “Boogie” is nothing more than a scarecrow without the pole to hold it up.

Every newspaper, piece of junk mail, bill, church bulletin, or cardboard box that came into our house was saved for either a firestarter or “Boogie” filler. Every milk jug was saved to create a “Boogie” head. Every ripped up piece of clothing, “Boogie” clothes. Every pair of pantyhose that got a run, “Boogie” skin. About three weeks before Halloween we would spend every night crumpling paper and stuffing old shirts and pants to the point of getting blisters. My Dad supervised from a sewing table where he was diligently constructing these parts into lifeless bodies.

There would be a pile for torsos.  A pile for legs. Hands. Feet. Heads. Dad would sew them together and then take a milk jug and pull some pantyhose over it and sew that into the shirt. He would sew stuffed rubber gloves on the sleeves and then sew shoes onto the bottom of the pants. He was kind of like Rumpelstiltskin but instead of a room full of gold, at the end of those nights, we had a pile of corpses.

The next part of the process I always looked forward to. In the cover of night, we would drag all the lifeless souls into our front yard and strategically place them to look like some sort of massacre happened. There were always extra torsos and legs so we would scatter them around at random. Then we would mix up a batch of raspberry jello in a big bowl and splatter the congealed ‘blood’ all over the place. While all this was going on my Dad would be tying nooses with twine and start hanging the best boogies from the legs or neck in the large oak tree in front of our house. There was always a doppelganger for each of us dangling in the breeze.  I always remember being quite proud of the reaction we would get when the school bus pulled up the next morning.

The problem with “Boogies” was that while the general public got to see them every year around Halloween, they always found a way of scaring my brothers and me at sporadic times throughout the year. Most kids are scared of their closet or under their bed at night but every now and again I would check ours out and a real “Boogeyman” would be there. I still can not be in a bathroom that has the shower curtain all the way closed without coming close to an anxiety attack for fear that a newspaper filled, flannel shirt clad monster is behind it.

I have to say we are a little lacking with our Halloween decorations this year. I have a pile of junk mail and some old clothes and briefly considered continuing the tradition and making a few “Boogies” of my own. Unfortunately, I am a bad Boy Scout and can not remember how to tie a noose or any other knot to save my life. Just as well though, I don’t think “Boogies” would go over that well during a pandemic anyway.