COLUMN: Straight From the Hog's Eye - October seems to end too soon

October, where have you gone? You always have the maximum number of days a month can have, yet you’ve blown past us faster than an orange leaf in an autumnal gust of wind.

You still have a few days left, however, and most notable (and notorious) among them is Halloween. You see, October, you made yourself such a busybody this year that I haven’t had ample time to plan my costume. I guess I’ll learn my lesson; if it’s that important to me, I should start planning around Labor Day next year, right?

I always look forward to Halloween, except for maybe a few years during high school and college when I paid it no attention.

Halloween is one of the landmark childhood events I’ve outgrown the least. I never thought it would be as much fun to dress up for Halloween as an adult; as a child, I always thought it would be something in which I’d lose interest someday.

Nonetheless, my interest in Halloween is different. Earlier in life, it was all about the candy; now it’s all about devising clever costumes and watching as many scary movies as I can.

My friends and I would genuinely try to scare each other as kids — except maybe the girls dressed as pretty princesses, for example. But we’d dress up as ghosts, vampires, zombies and all the other horror movie cliches. I’m sure that somewhere I have a picture of myself as a ghastly hobo with a bowler hat, which was a pretty good costume, I think. Now we just try to wear goofy getups to make people laugh at parties. And we generally won’t go anywhere near a store-bought costume, except for the articles we purchase while we’re piecing our costume together.

Last year, I went as an old-school journalist from the 1930s or ’40s. I wore a fedora with a “press” card above the brim as well as a tie and suspenders. I’m sure it sounds like a cop out, and it probably was, but it was an effective costume. One fellow saw me and yelled: “Extra! Extra!”

So I still have a few days left to plan a costume for this year. I’m sure I’ll come up with something; I occasionally do my best work when the pressure is on.

The main thing I’ll miss this year, however, is greeting trick-or-treaters. I live in the country again, and I grew up there, too. The area really has no drawbacks, because it’s spacious and quiet. But, because of its relative isolation, few parents are going to drive their children out there to get a few more packs of Sweet Tarts for their pumpkin-shaped buckets. That’s a shame for the kids, because when I lived in Florence, I made sure to hand out awesome candy — at least the peanut butter cups and other stuff I would have been happy to get when I was a trick-or-treater.

Moreover, I enjoyed watching the families having a good time. I saw a few familiar faces, but I was more excited about seeing all the people I didn’t know. It was a brief feeling of having a true community within our neighborhood and even with people from outside neighborhoods.

Just like the month of October, that spirit seemed to be gone about as soon as it arrived. The month will be prolonged by one hour as daylight saving time comes to a close this weekend, but that’s a minor concession as one of the finest months of the year once again draws to a close too soon.