A Blue Range Halloween

When I first moved to the neighbourhood where I now live, way back in in the dawn of the 1970s, it was one of the few neighbourhoods in Trinidad — perhaps, when I come to think of it, the only neighbourhood — where Halloween was widely observed. I have no idea why this is. This country, as my colleague Laura Dowrich points out today, has no particular connection with the tradition of Halloween. But somehow it existed in Blue Range, a strange hyperlocal custom. In those days we went around in scrappy home-made costumes, and we actually tricked when we weren’t treated. I’m sure she has no recollection of this, but one year Jasmine Alexander jumped me on Hillrise Road and tried to steal my loot.

Over the years Halloween has caught on in other middle-class suburbs in Trinidad. In Westmoorings (which, in the Trinidadian imagination, is the cradle of Trinidadian middle-classness of a certain kind) it was soon quickly taken over by rowdy adolescents, and there were incidents. In my neighbourhood, however, even as our lot grew up and were replaced by kids who rode mini-motorcycles instead of bicycles and motorised scooters instead of skateboards (I was going to say “and who smoked and drank”, except that we did that as well — some things never change), Halloween remained a relatively harmless occurence. In some ways it even became gentler. Nobody around here tricks anymore, for instance. Parents accompany the smaller children on their rounds and instruct them to say “Please” and “thank you”. In our day, you wouldn’t have been caught dead with a parent on tow in Halloween, unless you were, like, a newborn.

Soon, the bourgeois thuggery taking place in Westmoorings started forcing people to look for other trick-or-treating venues for their children. My neighbourhood, Trinidad’s Halloween mecca, was an obvious choice. These days, I’d say 75% of the Sponge Bobs and Batmans and Disney characters who come to the gate soliciting treats in their high-pitched little voices, are from outside the neighbourhood. This is probably something anybody planning on moving to this neighbourhood should bear in mind — be prepared for your confectionery bill to skyrocket at the end of October, as you will be supplying Halloween candy to the bulk of middle-class tots in the western peninsula.

As I write, it’s not yet seven o’clock, but already the majority of trick-or-treaters have come and gone. Nobody stays out very late anymore (you know, with the crime and everything). I just went out into the street to check. A few stragglers in the distance. A father’s voice saying, “Jean-Marc, come here–” (80% of the boys in Westmoorings are named Jean-Marc). In the distance, the sounds of bursting bamboo and exploding firecrackers, as the older kids start doing their thing. (These sounds, incidentally, have been part of the soundtrack around here since Divali, and will continue until New Year’s — and they come from way across the valley as well).

My nephew, who is now almost 18 and had his own Halloween experiences around here back in the day, arrived some time ago to take his little sister around the neighbourhood in a purple fairy costume, his own head wrapped ninja-style in a black t-shirt, probably trying to live down that Auntie Millie-manufactured tiger costume from ’93 or ’94. And at my feet lies Delphine, trembling with fear because the noise of bursting bamboo and firecrackers and dog-hearing aren’t exactly complementary — and praying, I’m sure, that there won’t be a repeat of last year.

10 Comments so far
Leave a comment













Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Name (required)

E-mail (required)

URI

Your Comment