CSotD: Tricks, Treats & Suchlike

Dogs and Halloween aren’t always a good combination, but today’s Bliss (Tribune) brought back a memory of a ridgeback who enjoyed dressing up.

Some of my dogs have tolerated it, some haven’t, but he thought it was fun, so one time I put him in a Canadiens jersey, balanced a hockey helmet on his head and sat him on a neighbor’s doorstep with a treat bucket, then rang the doorbell and hid behind a bush.

He also thought having kids come to our door was a great idea and would stick his enormous head out to greet them. One tiny fellow came back about 15 minutes later and his father explained that he didn’t need another candy bar. He just wanted to see the dog again.

BTW, I know some people who call their dogs by saying “treat.” Problem with that is that if you run out of treats, you run out of leverage. I’ll admit that my current dog certainly knows the word “cookie,” but I summon her by whistling.

This Flying McCoys (AMS) didn’t blow me away except that it sparked a warm memory of the little old lady who lived next door when I was four or five. Aunt Effie — as she insisted we call her — gave out popcorn balls each Halloween and I think I liked getting them from her more than I liked eating them.

Homemade treats are no longer a thing at Halloween, thanks to false rumors of doctored candy and apples. For a time, people would bring their kids’ candy to the hospital to have it x-rayed, but when my son was working the ER, he’d advise them to just throw it out and buy a fresh bag, which would be less expensive than firing up the x-ray machine.

When the 1950 Census was released, I looked up Aunt Effie. Turns out that sweet little old lady was about 10 years younger than I am now.

Reality Check (AMS) lives up to its name with this one. Bummer bummer, but I did laugh.

I think getting divorced at 34 saved me from a midlife crisis by dragging me through the wringer while I was still young enough for some course correction, though I’m not sure that counts as being lucky. But my dad changed careers when he was 50 and, while he’d been successful in his first go-round, he was a lot happier in his new gig.

It’s never too late.

This is an oldie from Francis Dahl, who was a longtime very local cartoonist for a variety of Boston papers.

This particular strip has always amused me with its dark irony, but also comes to mind whenever people talk about the burning of witches. The whole issue of witches is clothed in some mythology and some outright nonsense, but there really were trials and executions in the Middle Ages.

The burst of trials in Salem lasted less than a full year and was deeply regretted quite soon, though that’s of little comfort to the dozen and a half people who were executed. Still, honesty matters and what happened was not a major feature of the Puritan culture, which had enough other flaws for historians to deal with.

And witchcraft, to the extent that it had ever existed at all, had little to do with modern phenomena. Several years ago, the Atlantic had an in-depth takedown of Wicca and allied movements, which were largely invented out of whole cloth by Aleister Crowley and his cronies, but it’s now behind a paywall. However, if you have a subscription, it’s worth a read.

But there’s a very nice collection of Dahl cartoons at Who’s Out There, together with an appreciation of his contributions to cartooning and to Boston.

It’s not behind a paywall and it’s a lot more fun reading anyway.

Here’s refutation of a different Halloween myth. The holey sheet gag (say that quickly) originally starred young Linus Van Pelt, when he was still a little kid and hadn’t reached that magic age at which Peanuts characters stop aging.

It was transferred to Charlie Brown when the TV specials began, but it’s not canon, at least to those of us who had been Peanuts fans before the strip was animated.

And speaking of former babies in the Peanuts universe, Schroeder started out as a tiny tot, which made the toy piano gag a little more credible.

I came across this one while looking for the other and thought I’d add it to the day because they’ve just discovered a new Chopin waltz, making it newsworthy. And I like Snoopy’s foot fluttering with joy, which is how you know you’ve hit just the right spot with a dog.

Ruben Bolling also resurrects the Peanuts gang for this Tom the Dancing Bug political gibe. Bolling has been re-running political pieces on social media for the past month in preparation for Tuesday, but this is a new one.

And, alas, it’s much darker than the strip it’s satirizing, but, then, we’re living in much darker times. I will say, however, that he’s done a far better job than most satirists of capturing faces and gestures from the original.

In a few days, we’ll find out if this is still funny.

Here’s a bit of truly dark humor from Cornered (AMS), which took me a minute but then got a hearty, guilty laugh.

It reminds me of one of my most questionable moments as a father, when my son begged for a ghost story as we were camped out on the shores of a small lake and, after he promised he wouldn’t be scared, I told him the tale of the Golden Arm.

The story was scary enough for someone who was eight or nine years old, but it had a little extra zing because we had walked around the lake earlier, when it was still light out, and seen the mausoleum on the opposite shore.

What? He asked for a ghost story. He begged for a ghost story. When I told him I knew one but it was too scary, he assured me that it wasn’t.

But I promise you, in the years that followed, he got me back numerous times.

Now here’s a Halloween tradition from when I was a little guy: