Chicken Gizzards Dirty Halloween Trick

I returned last week from a jaunt through upstate New York and New England, where among other things I got a dose of Halloween fever. Everywhere you looked, pumpkins and skeletons.

That seemed perfectly appropriate for New England, where the autumnal night air is crisp and houses are 200 years old and probably haunted, anyway.

But Orange County?

It’s easy to imagine the Headless Horseman racing through Sleepy Hollow in mid-October, but San Clemente? Whoa, dude.

Yet, true to the form of recent years, Halloween has galloped into town much too early.

Call me old-fashioned (go ahead, I dare you), but to my way of thinking Halloween should be, like Flag Day, a 24-hour holiday. Actually, not even that long. Halloween should begin just after dark Oct. 31 and end at midnight.

Instead, merchants have enticed us into lighting up the house and yard two weeks in advance and in ways we used to reserve for visits from Santa Claus.

Instead of Halloween being a concentrated burst of make-believe and mystery and a little harmless fright, it’s now a “holiday period.”

And what better way to prepare for the Halloween holiday period than to visit the Internet. Halloween and Internet--two words that should never be used in the same sentence.

I hastened to one site and was greeted with: “Fall Is Coming! So decorate your lawn for the season. Check out our Halloween and Thanksgiving items. Great designs at great prices!”

One was a lighted ghost. “Item measures 46 feet by 33 feet and is illuminated with 1-35 socket cord set of clear & red C-7 bulbs.”

I don’t know what that means, either, but it sells for $39.95.

Or you can opt for the lighted jack-o’-lantern at $29.95. It measures 26-by-27 and is illuminated with “1-25 socket cord set of green, clear and amber C-7 bulbs.”

Then there are accessories, such as “outside white cord sets. Your choice of either 25, 35 or 50 socket cords for $1 each, limited quantity available.”

If nothing other than a tribute to American merchandising ingenuity, another site listed 112 Halloween decorations. The sheer number astounded me, but on inspection they seemed to be nothing more than various assortments of the standard ghosts, witches, skeletons and bats.

Chicken Gizzard Man

I thought the whole idea of Halloween was to make the house as dark as possible, not as bright.

Confused, I got hold of a local toy store manager who, for reasons that became obvious, didn’t want to be identified.

“I’m a bit of a cynic,” he said. “I think what happens is that commercialism created a situation, with the lights, candy and costumes, that created a holiday, as opposed to it growing naturally. When I was a child, we went out and you took a paper sack with you.”

While noting that some people have always decorated their homes at Halloween, he said the explosion of commercialism has come in the last five to seven years. “Every year, the available product grows,” he said. “I’m waiting to see the mechanical lighted turkeys [for Thanksgiving] that can walk across the lawn.”

For Halloween, however, we’ll have to settle for artificial pumpkins, sensory-equipped lighted talking skulls, electronic mannequins that sing and dance and, of course, fake spider webs.

Come Halloween night, my porch light will beckon the youngsters, but that’s the only special effect they’ll get.

The fun for me comes from playing into their fantasy and letting them know the last day of October isn’t any ordinary night.

My favorite moment came on my first Halloween in California 14 years ago, a boy who couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7 knocked on the door.

“Trick or treat.”

“Which do you prefer,” I asked, “candy or chicken gizzards?”

Silence from him. What kind of den had he stumbled upon, he must have wondered. Just what I wanted him to wonder.

“Uh, candy,” he said, haltingly.

I gave him a handful, and he started back down the sidewalk before stopping about 10 feet away. He turned back to face me and said, “Do you really have chicken gizzards?’

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.