“Orange” is the word on this Manic Monday. Mo gives us a word, and we are supposed to be inspired to write. It doesn’t always work! My first thought is of some orange trucks that we have around Denton, Texas, I’ve already told you about Frenchy’s Brand.

That leaves me with “Halloween” as my only connection to orange (other than my hair). But orange is the color of the season. “Halloween” means jack-o-lantern pumpkins, which are orange (unless you use a “ghost pumpkin.”

How can you not love a holiday centered around dressing in silly costumes, telling shivery ghost stories, and hitting up strangers for candy? When my children were small, we went all out for decorating on Halloween. Yes, we carved pumpkins, and used an old sheet to make a ghost to hang by the door.

We also went out in the woods and cut a branch from a dead tree to make our “Spooky Old Tree.” This was back in 1986 or so, and having a Halloween Tree was an unusual thing. We hung white Christmas lights in the branches and draped the tree with rubber snakes and plastic spiders. My boys liked to take a lollipop and wrap a Kleenex over it, fixed with a rubber band on the stick. A ghost. They used a black marker to put eyes and a spooky mouth on the Kleenex. I still had one of those “ghosts” they had made last year; it was 19 years old but I still hung it in the tree. Sadly, one of five fe-lions at my house discovered it and destroyed it. With cats, nothing is sacred.

Nowadays, I don’t go out to cut branches, because I found a tree at the craft store.

It’s not as dramatic as the big one, but it works on the mantle.

It’s spookier in the dark.

I don’t get to celebrate Halloween much, because it’s “prime time” for a storyteller. I’ll be out at other people’s parties entertaining their guests with ghost tales. What will you be doing?

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