Halloween 1975: Yep, I think I’d like to go back to being short again

My niece Sophia recently celebrated her 14th birthday (it was a real gala from what I heard, the social event of the season) and I couldn’t help but remember my own 14th birthday, a literal lifetime ago.

It was in 1975, Halloween Day to be exact.  It was a more modest celebration, but I certainly wouldn’t say it was a less happier one.  Here’s a couple things I remember most from that time:

1)  My mom got it in her head that I should go trick-or-treating with the other kids “one last time”.  I insisted I was too old and besides, I didn’t go the year before on my 13th birthday either!

She said “Honey if you wear a mask no one’s going to know you’re a teenager.”  Haha, that was the LAST thing I wanted to hear.  I said no, and she still got me a Batman mask in case I changed my mind.  

What I didn’t tell Mom (or anyone else), I was in the second month of my “prayer-thon”, a personal plea to the Big Man Upstairs to make me a couple inches taller.  At the start of the school year, our Phys-Ed teacher remarked how tall many of the guys had gotten over the summer.  He looked at me and joked that I went from third shortest in the class to second.  I was never self-conscious about my height until then!  (It took awhile, but in a couple years I’d become the towering figure of 5’8” I am today.)

2)  Also at the start of that school year, a foster-girl named Penny had moved in with the Davises, our neighbors up the red-dog road from our house.  She was short, curvy and a year younger than me.  I was in love with her the first time I laid eyes on her at our bus stop, and the day after these pics were taken…. well, you’ll see.

Holding my baby sister Courtney, and that’s my sister Donda Lin wearing our brother Steve’s Evel Knievel Halloween costume. 

Notice the Batman mask hanging on the fruit bowl? 

Getting back to my birthday, I remember asking my mom for a ‘homemade’ birthday cake that year, like the one she baked for my Dad that summer.

I wanted a german chocolate cake; I’d never had one before, but my brother Duke was taking German lessons after school (with a paid tutor—WHY) and verdammt, I was going to have something German too!

But what I wanted more than anything was a REMCO STAR TREK PHASER.  It had just hit the store shelves and was more than some toy, it was ‘transistorized’.  This sucker was the very first ‘Star Trek’ item with lights & sound, and from the commercials on tv, it definitely looked regulation size and then some.  (It also included a secret compartment with ‘light-discs’ of various spacecraft you could beam on a blank wall, a ‘Trekkie lightshow’.)  

I was at the age where I was pretty much done with toys, but if I was getting out, I was going out with a bang—or a phaser burst!  I had to have this in the worst way.

My mom came through of course, and I was blown away; it was bigger and even better than expected.  (It’s considered a real collector’s item today and verdammt, what happened to mine??)  Along with this gorgeous gat I got a pack of artist notebooks & pens (I went thru a LOT of drawing paper back then) and an awesome set of ‘monster candles’—a ghost (which she plunked on top of my cake), a bleeding skull, a witch & vampire. 

Along with that weird chocolate cake, it was a good haul.   

The day after my birthday (a Saturday), I was sitting on the stoop in front of our house with my new phaser, marveling at the size and… heft of the thing (and wondering if I was too old to pretend I was Captaiin Kirk in my back yard) when I heard:

“What is that?”

I look up— Penny!!  The new foster-girl from up the red dog road, she was on her way to get the mail (our rural mailboxes sat together on the main road). 

I said “It’s um… a replica of a weapon from a science fiction show...”  I thought for sure she’d laugh and say I was too old to be playing with toys, but she didn’t.  She asked where I got it, and when I told her it was a birthday gift from the day before, she said “You were really born on Halloween?  That’s the weirdest thing I ever heard!”

   Heh!

She asked if the phaser did anything, so I played her some of its annoying sound effects and explained it could also shine various spaceships on the wall, too bad we didn’t have a dark space to bounce images off of.  I tagged along with her to our mailboxes, and after retrieving her mail, she left her box’s lid open and said “Hey, shine your gun in there!”   I nervously fumbled the first light-disc into its slot and narrowed the beam.   

We both peered inside.  U.S.S. Enterprise, Klingon ship, UFO….  our heads were so close together our cheeks were almost touching.  If I thought I loved this girl before today…  I swear to God if I had a ring handy (especially a diamond one) I would’ve got down on one knee & proposed to her right there.

The following Monday morning at our bus stop, I secretly handed her this note:

Penny, will you be my girlfriend?   Signed, the Halloween Boy

That same day after school on the bus ride home, Penny handed me a note:  it said “Dear Halloween Boy, yes I will be your girlfriend.  Love, Penny”   JOY!  RAPTURE!

A week later we began sitting on the bus together, a week after that we began holding hands, and the weekend after THAT I went on my first hay-ride with Penny & her church group.   Oh, there’s a lot more to tell but I’ll save it for another time.  Until then…

Happy Halloween!