Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves: Our GenX Halloween Memories
Carolyn Cochrane 0:00
Up until, I think I was about five, I was always a hobo. Now, what was it about the hobo? Because let's be homeless people for Halloween, right? And my mom would put me in like one of my dad's old shirts, and she would sew, like patches from other materials, what looked like I had this threadbare shirt, and I'm also wearing a lot of them like a necktie, like a man's necktie, but all askew.
Michelle Newman 0:24
Yeah, in jail on Andy Griffin, exactly. It's because it's like the hobos. You know, they must have been like, they like, loosen the tie. Hello world. There's a song that we're singing. Come on, get happy. A whole lot of love is what we'll be bringing we'll make you happy. Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who are still worried there might be a razor blade in their apples.
Carolyn Cochrane 1:02
We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition,
Kristin Nilsen 1:14
and today we're saving the ghosts of Halloween pass by sharing the classically Gen X could only happen in the 70s or 80s. Memories of your meaning you the listeners. Gen X Halloween.
Carolyn Cochrane 1:25
I'm Carolyn,
Michelle Newman 1:27
I'm Kristin, and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.
Speaker 1 1:32
High on a hilltop near your home, there stands a dilapidated old mansion. Some say the place is haunted, but you don't believe in such myths. One dark and stormy night, a light appears in the topmost window in the tower of the old house, you decide to investigate and you never return.
Michelle Newman 1:57
Picture this. It's Halloween night, 1975 or 1979 or 1981 or 1983 it doesn't matter. The streets are buzzing with unaccompanied kids trick or treating. Many of us are in costumes made from things we found in our parents' closets. We are a gypsy, a hobo, a witch or a ghost, or we're this close to suffocating behind the thin plastic mask of a Ben Cooper costume, the elastic cutting into our chin threatening to snap every time we open our mouths, the vinyl smock stretched over our coat we're trying to see out the weirdly spaced eye holes that are sharp on the edges. I should say everything sharp. And we hope we we really hope that that mask and smock makes us look like Fonzie Casper, Wonder Woman, or even Sean Cassidy. It doesn't. It does not. Is it for Sean Cassidy, that's a fright, though. That was scary that Laura Ingalls, holy, yeah, we carry orange plastic Jack O' Lantern buckets and get them filled with smarties and Bitto honeys and Almond Joys, and then later, trade as much of that trash as we can for our sisters Reese's. And despite all that, and even if there were a handful of pennies mixed in with the candy in that bucket, it is the best night of the year.
Kristin Nilsen 3:28
Oh, absolutely. It made better than like Christmas and my birthday.
Michelle Newman 3:33
Oh, I looked so forward to it starting November 1. Yes, no, I went the next day. I went the next day. Be like, I can't wait, and I would know what my costume was gonna be, yeah, next year I'm gonna be this,
Carolyn Cochrane 3:50
yeah. Well, you can only imagine how I felt the Halloween that I was seven because I had the chicken pox. It was just the saddest thing. Although I think it was kind of fun being able, like, my mom wouldn't let me go all the way to the door, but I sat on this chair kind of away from the door, and, you know, said hi to everybody, and kind of got to see the other side of of trick or treating, give her outers. Yeah,
Michelle Newman 4:16
yeah. No, that's true. I still like to. I'm not this is not hyperbole. I still have that feeling inside me. Yeah, I do that is indescribable. It's a blend of anticipation and excitement, and it looks dark and glowy, and it smells like crisp air and tastes like a blend of caramel apples and butterfingers. Yeah, that's what the feeling is. Yeah, that's how I would describe it, right? And
Kristin Nilsen 4:40
I have decided that, you know, now we don't have any kids in the house. We're not making costumes anymore, and so I'm relying on the people outside my house to give me that, that excitement. But I've decided I want to go one step beyond waiting at my door and handing out candy I am this year, I'm going to go back to my old neighborhood. Good the one where I have my most memorable Halloweens, and I'm going to walk around on Halloween night, and I'm just going to be that grown up, like
Michelle Newman 5:08
without a kid, without a kid. This is sounding I don't know if you should have said that out loud.
Kristin Nilsen 5:13
Maybe I'll bring my dog. My dog is that better, but I've been back that's been times when I've been back to my old neighborhood in the fall, like right before Halloween. And I'll get that feeling that you just described Michelle, and I'll think it is such a right here feeling right here, literally on these sidewalks right here. And I want to recapture it. I want to revisit it. And I feel like, if I can do that with my dog, it will it will be timeless, like I'm not sure it will look any different than it did in 1977 because we're all in costumes. And sure, the costumes will change, and nobody will be wearing masks anymore, anymore. But still, I think it's going to be pretty timeless, and I will time travel.
Carolyn Cochrane 5:55
Yeah, that sounds really cool. I think you should do it and then report back.
Kristin Nilsen 5:59
I'm gonna report back. I do remember, hopefully, not from jail, right? I'm just walking my dog. I do remember my first Halloween. I remember my I was a bunny.
Carolyn Cochrane 6:10
Not remember her first Halloween. I do
Michelle Newman 6:14
a picture of you as a bunny. You were like
Kristin Nilsen 6:16
two. I was 18 months old. Yeah, I was, I was I was 18 months old. I told you my first memory is Fourth of July in 1969 oh, that was another one eating
Michelle Newman 6:28
the pie, the hostess pie, lemon. It
Kristin Nilsen 6:32
was a lemon pie. That's what it was. And I was like, I can't believe you haven't given me this before. No, my first memory is Fourth of July in the baby backpack watching fireworks over like Topanga Canyon or something. I don't know if it was Topanga Canyon. I don't know the names of canyons, but anyway, the reason I remember it is because I did not know what we were doing. I did not know why I was a bunny, and I did not and then and they were, my parents were so excited, and my mom put the little bunny ears on me over my head, and now here's your bag. And then we just start walking. We go outside, and we start walking, and we start knocking on doors. And I remember being like, what are we doing?
Carolyn Cochrane 7:16
You know, heads up before you Yeah,
Kristin Nilsen 7:18
I have sure my parents explained it to me, but you can only understand so much when you're 18 Exactly.
Michelle Newman 7:24
And listeners, make sure to open your Weekly Reader this Friday, because you're going to see a picture of 18 month old Kristen. It is adorable, but she's a baby. How do you agree that that's
Kristin Nilsen 7:34
amazing? Well, even the next one in 1970 you can see I'm wearing a diaper, so I'm, I'm still a baby, basically. And the picture of me so in 1970 I'm a clown, and I look like a two year old serial killer. I don't It's frightening. It is so frightening.
Michelle Newman 7:56
I think someone needs to study your brain, like we need to, let's, you know what? When you die one day, God forbid, we're gonna donate your brain to science. I have a question for you guys. So, you know I said earlier, I mentioned the Ben Cooper costumes and listeners, I hope you know what that is. You can picture it. They came in the box. It was that, yeah, the Wonder Woman costume, or the one the plastic Wonder Woman mask that basically your breath just kept condensing inside it, and then, and then you were just basically breathing in your own, you know,
Carolyn Cochrane 8:28
carbon dioxide.
Michelle Newman 8:30
I almost said carbon monoxide, but basically, yeah, okay. Ben Cooper, or homemade, like, that's a good this or that. What were your what were the most of your costumes, Carolyn, Ben Cooper, or homemade,
Carolyn Cochrane 8:43
I would say most of them were homemade, only because I have this just delightful feeling of when I got my Ben Cooper, oh yeah for costume. And I say delightful. But then also I remember having buyer's remorse, like, you know, there were so many choices. And I remember thinking after I got it home, like, because I I've seen mine when you posted them before, Michelle on our social media, and it was just, I can't even remember. It wasn't, it was some kind of Princess. But it was like, a no name Princess, because they probably couldn't, you know, license some of the princess's name. So it was like,
Michelle Newman 9:18
princess with 1s it was like,
Carolyn Cochrane 9:21
oh, so, yeah, so that was my only Ben Cooper one, but I do distinctly remember it. So, um, it's kind of neat to only have had one, because you only remember that one.
Michelle Newman 9:32
You know what's funny, I like how you've said you could remember because you were delighted. So I was very much homemade all the way. And I think every single year, they were homemade, and I wanted nothing more than to have a Ben Cooper cheapo. I know, like I was kind of envious of those kids, and I have a weird memory of the CASPER one, but I don't think I owned it, because I can't find a picture anywhere, and it would have been when I was really little. And I. Also can almost bet lots of money that my mom would have said absolutely not. Like she was all into the I'm either making your costume, I'm going to start, you know, a month before, and sew it, or, I mean, I was a gypsy for like, three years in a row, and I that was like, that's like the classic. I mean, understand listeners, we know a lot of this, maybe the costumes we're going to talk about are not, we're not really be appropriate today, but everybody just go to the way back machine and remember how we were in 1970 but anyway, I would just get things from my mom's you know, you'll see a picture in this week's Weekly Reader where one of her head scarves that she actually wore that matched one of her dresses, she wrapped that around my head, and I looked like Rhoda, and then she did, like the eyelashes, you know, and and I had, I don't know if it's a really big grapefruit, something we covered in tin foil, and that was like my, you know, my crystal ball. And so we were all about the really creative costumes, but all I wanted was that terrifying plastic Wonder Woman mask. Or, you know, I probably would have loved that Laura Ingalls one
Kristin Nilsen 11:08
were all the pop culture ones. Those were all the ones that were so of the moment, I don't recall that. It's like, I know we had them in our house, but I don't recall wearing one, except for wearing I do remember wearing a mask one time. I think it was when I was a witch, because the picture of me, the Witch here is me basically just in a black mumu, like you would not know what I was because I wasn't wearing the mask, and the mask freaked me out. I remember my mom sticking the mask on my face, and like stretching the elastic and getting caught in my hair, and I couldn't see, and it's cutting, and my eyelashes are getting caught on the and I was just a little freaked out by it. So my picture is me just standing there in a black mumu.
Michelle Newman 11:48
It was probably from your closet. It probably was actually part of your wardrobe. I can only imagine that when you were little. Yeah, you actually owned mumuz, because
Carolyn Cochrane 11:58
let's not forget everyone Christian was
Kristin Nilsen 11:59
like a 14 woman. She did moose. Captain, my grandma made them for me.
Carolyn Cochrane 12:05
I think as Gen Xers, we realize our moms, we've all we've talked about this a lot. Our moms were sewers, so it was almost a given that you were going to have these homemade costumes. And it was the, I don't want to say lazy moms, because maybe your mom wasn't lazy out there Ben Cooper fanatics, but you know, it was like the moms who didn't do that kind of stuff would be the ones that those kids are, the ones that got into the tomack, yes, because I was up until, I think I was about five, I was always a hobo. Now, what was it about the hobo?
Kristin Nilsen 12:38
Because let's be home people for Halloween,
Carolyn Cochrane 12:40
right? And my mom would put me in like, one of my dad's old shirts, and she would sew, like patches from other material, so it looked like I had this threadbare shirt. And I'm also wearing a lot of them, like a necktie, like a man's necktie, but all askew. Yeah, in
Kristin Nilsen 13:00
jail on Andy Griffin, because
Michelle Newman 13:02
it's exactly, it's because it's like the hobos, you know, they must have been like,
Carolyn Cochrane 13:08
they like, loosen the tie. So I also have this distinct memory of my mom, and she would take a wine cork and she would burn the end of it, and then she'd smudge it on my
Kristin Nilsen 13:18
face, like, like a five o'clock shadow,
Carolyn Cochrane 13:20
which is exactly, what I said, or like, would make me, yeah, exactly, like, just dirty, like, a chance to take care of myself.
Kristin Nilsen 13:32
But, yeah, where did the hobo come from? I don't know. I realized that a hobo is not exactly the same as an unhoused person. They were, I guess people who hopped trains? Yeah. I mean, they don't have them anymore. Well,
Carolyn Cochrane 13:44
right? I think that was a lot of it. And, oh, wait
Michelle Newman 13:47
a minute, is this? You're
Michelle Newman 13:55
Carolyn. You gotta be like two. This is the cutest thing I've ever seen, she has a pipe and she has a stick with a pouch on the
Kristin Nilsen 14:06
band.
Carolyn Cochrane 14:08
Guys, are you ready for your tiny baby here?
Michelle Newman 14:12
But she has the beard. And
Carolyn Cochrane 14:20
I want to tell you guys, this is your fun fact for the day. That stick and that bandana that I'm representing there and that hobos carried was actually called and referred to as a bindle. Okay, that's the proper name for that which they think maybe came from the German word for bundle. And a hobo who carried a bindle was known as a bindle stiff. So I guess you could say that I was a bindle stiff.
Kristin Nilsen 14:50
You and me, the serial killer clown should have gone together. This is, can we just give a shout out to the people who had to hallow? In their winter coats. How many of you wore the princess costume and then your mom made you put your snowmobile suit on over it? And you're like, Mom, such a crime. It was so, so sad. I it's a really fun exercise. I think everybody should do this. Try to make a list of all of your costumes, and what you'll find is that it's not as many as you think, because you didn't trick or treat for 20 years, correct? Probably trick or treated for six or seven or eight years, and that's it. And my favorite, just like all of you, my favorite was gypsy slash Roma. We would never have said we were great. Roma, you said Roma. Roma, yeah, out of the Gypsy, mostly because I got to wear my grandma's big, heavy clip on earrings, the big, giant hoops. And I just love that. And then my second favorite was pirate. And I think I was really excited to do something in the masculine realm instead of hyper female, because I feel like the ones that my mom was involved in were be like hyper female characters. And that wasn't jiving with me. I was a little was a little my inner tomboy
Carolyn Cochrane 16:03
was really, you were never a hobo, then with a five o'clock shadow that
Kristin Nilsen 16:07
I was. And I say, I think, because there came a certain point where I stopped remembering, and that coincides with when I moved, and when you move. I didn't have a big group of friends yet, and so I didn't know who to go trick or treating with and this was very complicated, because the place where I had moved was the Halloween capital of the world, that's right, I moved to Anoka, Minnesota, which is legitimately the Halloween capital of the world. And so on Halloween, you only go to school for a half day, and you wear your costume, and then you get on a school bus in your costume, and you get bused down to the Halloween parade, and you march in the Halloween parade in your costume, which is so exciting. But I was, I was off guard. I wasn't prepared. There wasn't a lot of a lot of planning, and I believe because of that, I was a hobo wearing my dad's shirt and putting, like, black eyeliner on my face. It's classic. It's It's classic. But I don't have a lot of good memories of that Halloween, because it was like, Who am I gonna go with?
Michelle Newman 17:04
Yeah, well, gypsy was absolutely my favorite. I don't have quite the memory that Kristin does, but I have this little pumpkin costume that I wore probably my first couple Halloweens. And my mom was one of the very first flight attendants on Southwest Airlines. She truly was in the first class. So they only flew to three cities in Texas, Dallas, Houston, and, I believe, San Antonio, and they didn't always have a full plane, and my mom couldn't always get a babysitter. So my sister and I just, just rode the plane lots of times. And I have, and I'll put this in the I'll put this in the Weekly Reader this week too. So I spent Halloween one year. I look like I'm about three and two or three. Let's see if I'm in March. So I look like I'm probably about two and a half, and I'm in the cutest little pumpkin costume my mom made, and my mom made my sister's witch costume. We just threw it out when I was there because it was it was so little and so cute, but both of us are looking at each other, like, why are we gonna save this? We have so many pictures of her in it, then years later, me in it, so we tossed it, but we went on the airplane and we passed out candy, so two cute little girls walking up and down. And so we have the cutest pictures of me and my sister in front of like the like on the jetway in front of the door, and you can see the Southwest plane behind. This is when the Southwest planes were sort of like that Kristen, kind of that color that's behind you in your in your attic, that kind of chartreuse yellow, you know, green. And then we also have some pictures with my mom and the other flight attendants, and they're all in their hot pants, the orange hot pants, and my mom's big fall and her hair. And we're all a big picture, big group picture, and we're in the bright orange seats with the pink polka dots. So I'll share that too. So that was a costume that I remember only through photos. Like I don't have the memory Kristen has, but, but, yeah. Then I was, I think I think I was probably a cat. Apparently I was Snoopy. One year, I just found some pictures, and I was like, What am I wearing? Snoopy costume? Don't remember it.
Kristin Nilsen 19:09
But yeah, are there trying to make a list? Try and make a list. Okay, well, we'll try. Well, I
Michelle Newman 19:13
think we can all agree, though, that Gen X Halloweens were just better the end, right? Yeah, thanks for listening, everyone today. We'll see you next time. No,
Kristin Nilsen 19:22
well, and part of that is because even though our moms were invested in making our costumes, it was still not something our parents were involved in. Now, parents are having Halloween parties, and they're trying to be the best decorated house in the neighborhood, and it becomes something that is not apart from the children, and we need something that just belongs to us. That's right, and it was a big deal. Do you remember it was a big deal when you got to go out for the first time without your parents? Yes, that was like crossing over into a new land, and you would it would be dark, and you didn't know where you were, and it was so nuts. But you were had, but you had a shit ton of. Candy, and it was a good night. I remember my friend Lizzie Flynn falling asleep on the curb in her pumpkin costume, like she just, we were just going sugar coma, total sugar coma. And it was like we were Little House on the Prairie going to South Dakota. We just kept on going. No, keep going. And she said, I just have to sit down. And she's sitting on the curb, and she was, her head was cradled in like the newspaper fluff of her pumpkin. And we looked at our watches, and it was 9pm and we thought it, I mean, that might as well have been, oh yeah, in the morning, we couldn't believe it. We got to get Lizzy home. Dude, sweet.
Michelle Newman 20:37
Did you roll her?
Kristin Nilsen 20:42
Did you guys have UNICEF boxes? Did you collect pennies for UNICEF?
Michelle Newman 20:46
Okay, I didn't. But every time I think of Gen X Halloweens, I associate it with one of my very favorite Judy bloom books, blubber, and that plays a really big part in that story. So that's where I even learned about it was through blubber. So I didn't personally, did you?
Kristin Nilsen 21:03
Oh, we absolutely did. But here's the thing, I don't recall bringing the pennies back. Maybe I did. I don't remember. Look at all these pennies. I keep on seriously.
Carolyn Cochrane 21:18
I'm sure you weren't the only one, right?
Michelle Newman 21:21
Well, a few weeks ago, we asked our followers on social media to share memories from their childhood Halloweens, and we got some of the best stories, and they're familiar. Yeah, they are. I swear I could have written many of these stories myself, which proves, once again, our generation shared so much
Kristin Nilsen 21:41
yes, without social media, like, how does it catch on? I don't know. Well,
Carolyn Cochrane 21:46
I have a feeling there must have been some like, hobo article in, like, Good Housekeeping that all the moms got because our friend, our friend, critters, yeah, critters with a K. She shared this comment. She said, hobo, Gypsy, cowgirl, hippie. I don't think I ever had a store bought costume. Miss the 70s and pillowcase trick or treat bag.
Michelle Newman 22:13
And I forgot hippy, hippie, no one in the 70s, yeah. Or 50s girl. I was a 50s girl.
Kristin Nilsen 22:19
I was a 50s girl all the time too, because I got older, that was like, you were gonna go trick or treating in junior high or something. It would
Carolyn Cochrane 22:26
be, right? You roll up your jeans, yeah? Put on your dad's shirt again,
Michelle Newman 22:29
yeah? Shirt. I wore my mom's cheerleading uniform that she had from junior high, that had the big, you know, because they were long skirt, like, kind of a big circle skirt, right back then. So I used to wear that, did you guys carry see critters? Says she carried a pillowcase. I don't remember carrying pillowcases as a kid. I thought that was a thing that my kids started like that was later. We always carried those little orange pumpkins.
Kristin Nilsen 22:53
We had orange pumpkins for sure, and a lot of people had pillowcases. And sometimes you'd get something branded, like I see in one of my pictures is a Dairy Queen plastic trick or treat bag.
Carolyn Cochrane 23:04
I might be carrying something like that in that one photo. You do? Sure you do Chris for
Michelle Newman 23:09
Michelle, yeah. Maybe it came with your costume. Oh, maybe it was by this costume. Get the free bag actually probably says like tgny on it or something.
Carolyn Cochrane 23:16
Oh, God, I love a good tgny. Well, again, I'm thinking that our moms all had subscriptions to the same publications because aunt Christie shared that her mom sewed by hand all of their Halloween outfits in the 70s and 80s. So again, you know the Ben Cooper examples. I think we all just when we see them on social media, we get all excited because they were such a treat to us, because we barely ever, if ever,
Kristin Nilsen 23:43
got to be, I'm gonna say Jamie Curtis, that's not you got to be Jamie
Carolyn Cochrane 23:48
summers, yes, Amy summers summers,
Kristin Nilsen 23:51
you got to be Fonzie like that was cooler than being Little Red Riding Hood. Sorry,
Carolyn Cochrane 23:56
who? No offense Sean Cassidy, because you know we love you. But who is gonna pick Sean Cassidy to be their costume? Like would a girl that really loved him want to be Sean Cassidy? Yeah, probably would a boy. I don't think any boys were gonna pick him over. I mean, I shouldn't say that, but I just don't know that he would have been
Kristin Nilsen 24:15
complicated, unless they're just like Hardy Boys fans. Because, you know, there were, my brother watched Hardy boys too marry
Carolyn Cochrane 24:23
Sean, but I don't think he was Joe Hardy. Was he in the box of Ben Cooper? I think he was Sean Cassidy, the rock star. Who
Michelle Newman 24:30
knows? Geez, wait, I'm sorry, ouch. Shane, we hear you yelling at us. Oh. Shane, 87 ragged Tiger would have definitely been, he definitely would
Kristin Nilsen 24:41
have been Sean Cassidy. And I want to
Carolyn Cochrane 24:42
just finish up something that Aunt Christie said. So she comments that her mom bought the black furry material for a black cat, black flowy plastic material for the witch, orange felt for the clown. So she remembers all like, the textures, all those like, basically things you got at tgny. In the sewing section, silvery satin material with stars for my little brother's wizards, wizard slash, wizard slash. And she willingly spray painted a black stripe down the middle of my 80s big hair for the punk rocker year.
Michelle Newman 25:23
That's awesome. Very dedicated mom. Love, love, love, you guys. Remember when? And maybe it's just when I became aware of it, because in my mind, it's like they were invented in the 80s, but the cans of the hair the color spray. So we could spray our hair pink, or we could spray that was, like, that was that was just tremendous for me. Like, I can't even, I can't even think of a word big enough that I could but I have brown hair, so it was hard to see. Like, if I wanted purple, you could never really see it in my hair, but I could do like, yellow or bright pink, you know. Yeah.
Carolyn Cochrane 25:54
So fun. Mark, Uncle Mark, our friend said that in the late 60s and the early 70s, my his mom, as all of our moms, we've discovered, are always made our costumes. He has vivid memories of his brothers and himself being a devil, a clown, a pirate, a race car driver, bunny rabbits, a robot and even a few other things. And you guys, I got to tell you, I had this wave of guilt come over me as I was reading these comments and remembering my costumes growing up in terms of the dedication that moms had to making it go right, because I was not that mom, and I just want to share one little story, because my kids remind me of This forever, I'm going to blame this on my undocumented undiagnosed add at the time. So I didn't know this stuff. I was big procrastinator, and when it's the morning of Halloween or the night before, target doesn't have a whole lot left on the racks. And so Maggie's favorite story to tell is the year that I got all of the gold, that little gold tinsel that had stars on it that you could put on your Christmas tree. It was kind of had, like, wiry, yeah, it had, and so I just, she had a white sweatshirt. I just wrapped this all around her, and I said, just tell people you're a constellation.
Michelle Newman 27:14
I thought it was really high brow, like, I'm a constellation.
Carolyn Cochrane 27:19
And then I have this one sad picture of Andrew with, again, it was like, Well, what do we have around the house? Okay, there's a soccer ball in the garage, and I just cut it. I sliced it, you know, the middle, and I stuck it on his head, and he was a soccer ball. So I was not that mom getting all the material and everything
Michelle Newman 27:41
I was because my girls were so they, they rarely wanted to just be something like, I want to be a witch. So, you know, I remember one year Maddie wanted. It was mostly Maddie that my younger daughter who wanted to be the weird stuff. So she wanted to be a ninja pig. And so we got her a pink sweatsuit, and then, you know, she had the ninja thing around her head, and, you know, I made like, the little pig ears, and she had a little curly tail. But my favorite was one year. You know, when girls get to be a certain age, and if you've seen them, they come trick or treating, but maybe they're like in sixth grade, so they all just go by, like the onesie pajamas from Target, and they're babies. They just want to be. So that's just super easy, and it's warm. When we were in Minnesota, Maddie though her friend group was going as babies, but Maddie wanted to be super baby. And I was like, what's super baby? And she said, it's a superhero. That's a baby. And I was like, Well, so what does that look like? She's like, well, I have a cape and I have a mask, and so Maddie had the onesie, and then I got from like, the costume store, it's almost like a red, velvety cape. And I cut out, like the Superman symbol from different felt squares, and it has the B in the middle. And then I cut out all the letters that say super baby, and it's giant on the back, so she could turn her cape, and it's a super baby. And then she wore like a superhero mask, you know, with it. And so I was really proud of that one. I like that one. They did. I didn't ever like make from scratch stuff. They were also really big into, like the Disney princess costumes and that kind of
Kristin Nilsen 29:10
stuff too, the making of the letters, I have to tell you. And I was into the costumes because I think I was trying to recreate or revisit my own nostalgia. And I wanted it to be as fun for him as it was for me. Now he's in your camp, Carolyn, and he's not deciding until the last minute, and I'd be like, we got to start now. Halloween is in three months, so because I might have to cut out letters and the costume that I am most proud of because I also had to cut out letters and line them up and people, that's math. That involves math, lining up the letters and making them same size and the same size. He went as a can of Dr Pepper. It's adorable. It's adorable.
Michelle Newman 29:50
Okay, we'll see if we can find a picture and Okay, well, we'll add this. This Weekly Reader is going to be really fun. We're going to have just pictures of not only us as children, but our favorite man. Be some of our favorite costumes that we may help
Kristin Nilsen 30:01
make for our kids. And the other one I'm really proud of for him, and we're definitely putting this in the Weekly Reader. I know where
Michelle Newman 30:08
he went as Shaggy. Oh, talk about Bjorn Borg.
Kristin Nilsen 30:10
Oh, god No, he wouldn't do it. I wanted him to be. He's in like, seventh grade now, so he's all long and gangly, and he has all this super long blonde hair. And I'm like, please just wear a headband and carry a tennis racket and then run. Just run and you're bjornburg. No, he wouldn't do it. I was gonna give him money to do it. No, the year, he was Shaggy, he looked just like, Shaggy. Okay,
Michelle Newman 30:29
find that picture, please.
Carolyn Cochrane 30:30
I'll send that one. Oh, wow. Love
Kristin Nilsen 30:33
it. Okay. Did you guys ever try to make your own haunted house? I'm not saying like, go to a haunted house, because some haunted houses were like, legit, and you paid money, or it was at school. But some people would be like, come to my haunted house. Yes, it's on my deck. And the two things that you had to have, you had to have these two things, and everybody had to be blindfolded, and you'd put your hand in the bowl of cold spaghetti. Yes, the other thing that you had to have were the peeled grapes, and those were eyeballs, and it's everybody knew this, and still you were scared. I ever knew it was a grape? It was
Michelle Newman 31:11
Yeah, but there's something when you're little about because I feel like we had these through Girl Scouts or through school. I feel like even our elementary school might have had haunted houses. And there's even if you knew though, there's something about being a kid and it's Halloween, and they put a blindfold on you, and then it's just like, all bets are off, even if you're like, it's probably gonna be cold spaghetti. But what if it's not? It's
Kristin Nilsen 31:32
real guts? What if it's actual guts? And some big kids garage, it's gonna be the big kid. So MP, 123, said loved Halloween as a kid. I still do trick or treating fall festivals at school, homemade haunted houses, spaghetti guts and grape eyeballs, because you got to have the spaghetti guts and grape eyeballs dressing up and listening to my quote, chilling, thrilling sounds of the haunted house album. Honestly, she said I listened to it all year round. I remember having one of those plastic witch masks with tiny eye and nose holes, same, same, and the elastic broke halfway through chick or treating. What are you without? You're just a woman in a well,
Carolyn Cochrane 32:12
sometimes, especially in Texas, because it was so warm and humid that keeping that mask on, it was just suffocating. And so so many of us would be walking around with it on, like, our forehead, you know, just like, just perched on our top of our
Kristin Nilsen 32:25
heads, because slide them up. Breathe. Okay,
Michelle Newman 32:30
this is funny, and I'm sorry, dude, me so much the chilling, thrilling sounds of the haunted house, I feel like I can picture the cover. So I'm going to see if I can find it and post it on social media this week, because I bet a lot of people because I bet a lot of people
Carolyn Cochrane 32:44
would get a booster dude, big time. Our teacher would have it and put it on, like the portable record player in class, and totally from the library, they checked it out,
Kristin Nilsen 32:52
and then roll the record player in
Michelle Newman 32:53
on the card. Another idea. Yeah, yeah, that is so fun.
Kristin Nilsen 32:57
So aunt Christie again, says my dad was that dad who spent weeks before each Halloween, building a haunted house in the garage, again in the garage, homemade coffin out of plywood, a maze of walls lined with black garbage bags, bowls full of once again slimy grapes. And he'd dress up as a fake newspaper stuffed Warlock to sit in a lawn chair outside and jump scare the little kids as they went in or came out. His proudest scare was a little boy who peed all the way running down the driveway screaming because he was so terrified, and he left a liquid trail
Kristin Nilsen 33:39
of that little boy to somebody else right now.
Michelle Newman 33:44
Core memory, I was gonna say for Aunt Christie, but also for the little boy, right?
Kristin Nilsen 33:50
Yeah, telling that to somebody right now.
Michelle Newman 33:54
Well, you know, the 70s, there's some costumes that are just so 70s, right? And Star Wars definitely, I think, was one of them. And Melanie shared this story with us. She says, In 1977 I'm 10, and my Star Wars fandom is at 11. I love that my mom made me a Princess Leia cost. My mom made a Princess Leia costume for me, including mohair buns for my hair. Okay, now you can buy a wig. Do you think maybe in that first one, it was like the plastic masks? So she had to make them. And I love that. How 70s is that she's not a mohair. My little sister is in her awesome Ben Cooper. See three po costume. I can picture it fully committed to that gold mask, no matter how hot it gets, I'm at the school carnival. We're in the middle of a cakewalk getting more 70s every sentence. Melanie, a cake walk. You guys, if there was ever a cake walk at any of these functions I went to, I was like, gonna stay there all day? What was it? What was I gonna do with a cake just. Seemed like so indulgent to me, if I got to leave with an entire cake that I didn't bake, right? Yeah, and
Kristin Nilsen 35:07
there was no practicality. Like, what are you going to do at the carnival now with your cake? I don't
Carolyn Cochrane 35:11
remember when my mom was working, you know, she was volunteering at another booth or something. So I just carried, like, this angel food cake over to her, and she was like, go put it by my purse.
Michelle Newman 35:24
I don't have a memory of winning one. I just have a memory of wanting it so badly like that would be my life would be made if I won a cake at a cake walk. Okay, so back to Melanie's story. My mom is waiting for us, and I see one of my classmates walk up, waiting for the next go round. She says to my mom, who's Melanie supposed to be Holly hobby?
Kristin Nilsen 35:44
Oh, knife to the heart. Are you
Michelle Newman 35:46
kidding? I gave my best sarcastic Leia tone. I am Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan, blank stare. Crickets. Now I'm exasperated. You know, she got the Death Star plans, not scared of Darth, Vader, that Princess Leia. Oh, right, Star Wars. She says, Okay, I She sounds kind of like a brat. That girl, yeah. And then Jake, JK, S A one says, God bless the just the homemade costumes, and also the 70s that we did shit like this. As an older kid, my go to costume was a teen werewolf. I had found a wig in exactly my hair color. I cut off lots of snips of hair. I spread elmer's blue on my face and patted on the hair. I used face paint for my nose and mouth. I also did the backs of my hands. Oh so great. I wore my dad's letterman jacket. It was absolutely disgusting getting off lots of rinsing with hot water into a big bowl. But I don't think I ever lost a costume contest. That's brilliant.
Kristin Nilsen 36:54
I love it. I love it. I wish I'd thought of it. I wish I'd thought of it. It's
Michelle Newman 36:57
so brilliant. My mom died. My sister's face green, but with food coloring and didn't come off for days and days and days. Oh, my god, yeah,
Carolyn Cochrane 37:07
yikes. How did she do that? Like, just,
Michelle Newman 37:11
just, like, within what I think it was, just like food color and water, she just rubbed it on Melanie's face. And I feel like it's, it was like a story that was, you know, like a lore, like it was told over and over again that, like, she couldn't get it off for like, a week or something.
Carolyn Cochrane 37:24
All right. Keeping on with our comments. Our followers to Toby shared that that they remember Casper, the Friendly Ghost, store bought with the classic mask, and then in the leaner years, they said, I always had to be a hobo. Some some hobo significant just like, what? Why? What was the deal with a hobo unless, again, it was just like this huge spread in some woman's magazine that our moms all subscribed to. Like, why else are we all hobos? It's not like they were hobos in the 70s jumping on trains.
Kristin Nilsen 38:03
They were like, iconography, right?
Michelle Newman 38:07
Yeah, but because maybe, okay, so yes, I do feel like it was a more classic symbol in movies and TV shows and stuff from like the 40s, the 50s. So maybe our parents dressed as hobos. And then when they had children of their own in the 70s and didn't know what to make they're like, I always like to be a hobo. That was a super easy costume, and then they could just do it. That's possible. Because, yeah, as parents, we often sort of, you know, influence our kids, like, oh, you can just be this. I was always a gypsy. I mean, we can't do it a lot now, because a lot of the things we were are politically incorrect. But maybe that's why that's a really
Carolyn Cochrane 38:47
good point. Yeah, because my favorite, favorite musical, beyond all musicals, is meet me in St Louis, and when it's Halloween and meet me in St Louis. Yes, the the youngest tudy is, I don't, I don't know if she calls herself a hobo, but that is what she dresses up as.
Kristin Nilsen 39:04
So And truthfully, that is the easiest costume from your parents point of view. Big shirt, big pants, cinch it up with a belt. The you know, get a crunchy hat.
Michelle Newman 39:14
Get a better still alive. Get a hat. Yeah.
Carolyn Cochrane 39:18
Oh gosh. And our friend Goldman, 1971 said, I remember that a student in my class went with a bag on his head and a sign that said, I killed Jr. I know the mom of that kid, something I would do. Here's a plastic grocery.
Michelle Newman 39:37
Really smart, and it's really clever. I don't really know that it's anything people kids could be today, but it's pretty dang funny just because, not because it's wrong, but just because even the parents today are probably too young to get it right.
Kristin Nilsen 39:53
Okay, so some of these costumes just scream the 70s. Like, how 70s can you get? Now we know gypsy. And hobo are in that category, for sure, but Wendy Aaron says, When I was in sixth grade, I told my mom that my friends and I wanted to dress up as quote, unquote, ladies of the night for Halloween. I think we learned about these fancy ladies on fantasy island. She said no, with no explanation, and it wasn't until about six years later, I realized why we couldn't be little North Dakota prostitutes when you're in sixth grade.
Michelle Newman 40:28
But it's a good point. If you're watching Fantasy Island Love Boat, you're seeing a lot of you know, you're watching diamonds, watching all these things, and you're seeing these fancy ladies.
Kristin Nilsen 40:38
And I want to be that's funny one day lady. And Patricia. Moogly says, when I was about 14, I went trick or treating with some girlfriends. I wore my big sisters knee high leather boots with my jeans tucked in some kind of fancy top, a long wig and lots of jewelry. I was supposed to be a model, but my smart ass friend told everyone I was a hooker. I did. I was a hooker, like, legit. I was a hooker one year in high school. And I'll find that picture for you too, because I was proud of that one. And I think I was just doing it to, like, just to make people talk, yeah, just to be naughty. I was doing it to be naughty, and my mom no longer made my costume. I'm gonna do it well. I'm
Carolyn Cochrane 41:20
sure I've told you guys this, but one of Andy's fraternity parties, it was like an annual tradition, one of his date the date parties, totally not appropriate anymore, but was called pimps and prostitutes. Yes, I did dress as a prostitute once, but I was in college, so not, not as young as you. Kristen,
Kristin Nilsen 41:40
well, high school is not that far from college. Probably 17. I was probably seven. I had a
Carolyn Cochrane 41:45
two I had a tube top. It
Kristin Nilsen 41:49
was all sequence. See, I think I had a t shirt on over my whatever I was wearing that was sexy. So I'm really sort of watering down the whole experience.
Carolyn Cochrane 41:58
Had on your puppy ski jacket.
Michelle Newman 42:01
Well, our friend Laura deal shared this story with us, and you guys, just wait for the end. Okay, just wait for it. She also sent a picture with us, so I'll try to include that in the Weekly Reader as well. When I was four, my mom made me a mermaid costume. Only problem was there was no way to walk with the tail on, so my mom decorated our wagon, and my friend Kurt and his older brother Trent, dressed as pirates, and Trent pulled me door to door in my wagon, soon, we noticed that my bag was getting full much faster than theirs were at most of the doors, I was getting double or triple handfuls of candy. My mom told the boys not to worry. When we got back to our house, we would divide the candy fairly. When we got home, my mom had us dump out our bags and start sorting my dad noticing how much more candy I got, asked my mom about it, and she told him it was weird. Everyone kept giving me extra candy. My dad started laughing and said, Oh, no, they thought something was wrong with her legs, and felt sorry for her. The next Halloween, I asked again if I could be a mermaid, but my mom said,
Kristin Nilsen 43:07
No mermaid every year, poor little crippled girl. We would have said too. We would have used,
Carolyn Cochrane 43:15
well, I think this has to be one of my favorite handmade costumes that one of our listeners shared so Jennifer Zoller farmer shared, when I was little, I was Pippy, long stalking. I loved the books and dressed like her for dress is your favorite character day. I also did it for Halloween that year. We take a metal clothes hanger and bend it so that we could get my braids to stick out. I can't remember if
Kristin Nilsen 43:39
I did that or if I just wanted to do it. I remember trying to do it. I tried braiding around the hanger. But I don't there are no pictures of me, so I don't think it ever happened. So I'm having FOMO.
Michelle Newman 43:51
Jennifer, yeah, I tried it. I remember myself, and I remember not being able to do it. You couldn't get your braids to stick out. I couldn't figure out where the hanger went. Like now I'm imagining maybe you put it like, over your head, like one of the, you know, like the Steve Martin arrow that goes through your head thing. But when I was little, I was probably just trying to, like, attach. It explains a lot, doesn't
Kristin Nilsen 44:19
it does. Okay? We're gonna share a speak pipe with you right now. That is so horrifying. It is so bad that we were almost like, can we not play this? I don't think we can play it, but let me just set this up for you. First of all, we're playing it because it's so horrifying and because this is not something that would ever happened today, and she knows it. Our caller is like, oh my god, can you believe this happened to me? It's so bad. I'm confident that the horrible thing that happened to her was somebody trying to be funny. Not funny. Funny, not funny. Okay? Like he's making a joke, and it's horrible. Yeah.
Michelle Newman 45:00
I know. Can I just add to that you said something that would so not be said today. Sadly, it probably would in certain parts, but like, we hope it wouldn't, yeah, let's all cross our fingers that it wouldn't. But yeah, it's, it's just one more of those very 70s things. That was seven. It was, it was okay, I guess, yeah,
Kristin Nilsen 45:16
and she wouldn't be sharing it if it wasn't horrifying, correct? Okay, so listen to who is this? We have Melissa. I believe. Listen. So listen to Melissa's story. Oh, my God. Hi,
Speaker 2 45:28
ladies. It's Melissa from Massachusetts, Fall River, home of Lizzie Borden. I wanted to give you my Gen X trick or treat story. So it was 1978 I was 10 years old, first time not in a store block costume, as we found a nice, homemade Indian costume from a yard sale. So my mom takes just me out. First year, my sister started to not dress up. She was 14, and we go to my great aunt's house. We lived in the city, so we didn't go to door to door. So she takes me to my great aunts and my great uncle, who I didn't really see very much. He sat in the corner, smoked a cigar, read books constantly, comes out of his reading room with a rifle and points it at me and says, goddamn Indians. We should shoot them all, and my mom freaked out. We ended up leaving. I don't really remember what happened. I know she was very upset with my dad, because it was my dad's aunt and uncle, and my dad laughed and said, Oh, I'm sure he was joking. Well, to this day, I don't know if the gun was loaded, my parents have passed? I can't ask them, but I really don't think he was joking. So that's my Gen X story, you know, dressed as an Indian have a loaded gun pointed at you.
Kristin Nilsen 46:55
Oh, my God, okay. I do believe he's being literary in some freakish Ernest Hemingway, hyper masculine, toxic way.
Michelle Newman 47:08
But again, that's a joke that falls flat, right? Like of a little child,
Kristin Nilsen 47:13
right? Well, and just the fact that we've because of the horror of what happened to her. We've glossed over the fact that she dressed as an Indian. I mean, we all just thought twice about that. We would not have thought twice about putting in, you know, I don't know what. I don't
Michelle Newman 47:31
know. We talked about it. Like, even in our road trips episode, that would go to stuffies, and we would all get, like, the the red and blue and green feathery colors. Yes, we would run around our front yards and we, you know, doing like, little cries. And, yeah, it was, it was a different time. Y'all, that's
Kristin Nilsen 47:47
all, yeah, you know, when you we know better now do exactly right. And so no just disrespect to Melissa's mom, because my mom probably would have done the same thing. Look at this lovely costume that somebody made at this yard sale, yeah, well, that's right, that's right. We were, we were a minority school, like,
Carolyn Cochrane 48:09
I mean, I remember when it was Thanksgiving, we bought, we brought in our brown I think I've shared this our brown paper, like grocery bags, and there was a way you cut it to make it an Indian best, and then you decorated it. Yes, fun. Did the headdress. I mean, yeah, when you know better, you do better. Just like, yeah.
Michelle Newman 48:26
We had no ill intentions doing it. We just thought it was fun. Now we know why. It's not even something that's right. Present to a child, okay, I think, I think we've covered our faces, and
Kristin Nilsen 48:37
our lesson is concluded, yeah, of that poor child with the gun pointed at her Shame on him.
Carolyn Cochrane 48:46
Here's another speak pipe from our listener, Donnie.
Speaker 3 48:51
When I was in kindergarten, my brother and sister dressed up like a scarecrow and a devil and brought a gigantic pumpkin in my wagon to my kindergarten classroom, and it was full of Halloween cookies to share with the class. It was the most exciting thing
Carolyn Cochrane 49:17
that I can remember from my kindergarten year that is super Imagine if you had older I was always jealous of my friends who had older siblings. I was always jealous of them no matter what was happening.
Kristin Nilsen 49:30
And devils were also a big 70s costume. You don't really see people being devils anymore,
Carolyn Cochrane 49:35
no, but remember what this has nothing to do with anything except this is what I think of every time I think of Devil is the, you know, obviously the pitchfork and the red thing, but it was like a tuna fish.
Kristin Nilsen 49:52
They looked exactly like the deviled ham guy.
Carolyn Cochrane 49:56
Yeah, maybe that was a costume you could send away for with. Like. Five proofs of purchase if
Kristin Nilsen 50:01
you saved all of your double tam wrappers.
Kristin Nilsen 50:09
Yeah. Oh, you guys, we love getting speak pipes from you. If you have stories to share with us like that, you can go to our website, go to the Contact Us, tab, and then scroll down, you'll see a little, a little button with a microphone on it, and it will say, does it say, start recording something, yeah. And you can just start talking. I think you get 90 seconds or something like that. I think this, this is just a handful of the memories that we've got to share with you. We could do a part two, a part three, a part four. This could go on and on and on, but I think we let what we claimed at the beginning of this episode is absolutely true, that Gen X had the best Halloween this year. Maybe throw it back old school and just find some random things in your closet to throw on. Maybe you want to be a hobo. Get a big shirt from your husband, grab a bowl of peeled grapes or cold spaghetti and make your trick or treater stick their hands in it before you give them a penny. It'll be the best night ever. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll see you next week.
Michelle Newman 51:15
Thanks, as always, to our Patreon supporters. You're not just helping us keep the podcast alive. You're part of the family, and if you'd like to join in and support what we do and keep hearing your Gen X childhood in a podcast, head over to Patreon and come be part of it. And today, we're giving a special shout out. Thank you to these patrons. Sandra, the dead sleep podcast, Rosa, Susan, Christy, Jenny, Sherry, Aggie, Nina, Valerie, Patty, Rochelle, Mindy, Susan and Joanna. Thanks so much.
Carolyn Cochrane 51:54
That's amazing. Next time you need to read them all in one breath and see if you can do that. Oh, I'm going to try it. Challenge yourself a little bit, and listeners remember how we used to call into radio stations and beg them to play our favorite songs. Well, here's kind of the 2025, version of that. Leave us a review, go to the platforms where you listen and just give us five stars. Tell them how great we are, because really, that is the best way to keep our Gen X mix tape of pop culture memories spinning for everybody to hear. So we want you to channel your inner fan club president, tap those stars and tell the world why they should tune in each week, because those stars and reviews are the new fan club buttons, and we want you to wear yours proudly.
Kristin Nilsen 52:37
In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast courtesy of the cast of Threes Company, two good times, two Happy
Carolyn Cochrane 52:44
Days, Two Little House on the Prairie.
Unknown Speaker 52:47
Cheers. Trick or treat. Trick or treat. Give
Carolyn Cochrane 52:50
me something. Yes, if you don't something, something, I don't care. Down your
Kristin Nilsen 52:55
underwear. Underwear is always so funny. The information, opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belongs solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary, Richards, Nanu, Nanu, keep on trucking and May the Force Be With You. You.