Design Rocket: Halloween

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VINTAGE EYEWEAR
Well, you can go get glasses at the local Lenscrafters, OR you can hunt down some spectacular vintage hand cut frames at your local antique shop and have them fitted with your prescription lenses. Or maybe---do both. I have some very normal, "don'-t-cause trouble" frames, and some "in-your-face" frames I like to wear when I am feeling "con cohones" and have had a drink or two. Better to buy "new old stock", if you are going to invest much in the lenses. It is not good to throw money into old frames in bad shape that will fall off your head or lose an arm and need that proverbial piece of masking tape to keep them together. Unless that is the look you crave--the look of half the boys in my nerdy seventh grade class circa 1965. If so, I have an old briefcase and a pocket pen holder I would like to sell you. I'll throw in the slide rule.
Lawn art and ashtrays
Back when guys stayed home more, listened to the radio and do other things at the same time, they probably labored over homemade lawn art, standing ashtray holders, and door stops. Usually they were made out of plywood, then painted. Look for slightly crackled paint. Many of the best of these were old comic strip characters like Jiggs and Maggie, or the ocasional Disney character. Black cats are plentiful. Also Butlers. You do not have to smoke to appreciate them.
old silhouettes
Many of these come from the 20's and 30's. You can often guess the age of the piece by the dress of the person whose portrait it is. Hung together on a wall, they have a wonderful impact.
Old cookbooks by local groups: i.e. Grange cookbooks, church cookbooks, college cookbooks, etc.
Tacky Souvenirs from old site seeing locales

Just a little Halloween memory. I'll be back next week with some long overdo posts!

Here is my first grade class. I am here. Bet you cannot find me! I can still recall this day and all the fun it held, as well as the promise to come of long hours out trick-or-treating after supper. When I was young, quite early in life, I went out by myself and did not come back for many hours. The year of this picture I most certainly did, and I was all of 6 years old. It was great fun and I had tremendous independence, as well as absolutely no fear. I mean, NONE. That year, in Rahway, New Jersey, I actually went so far from home that I got a little lost. Fortunately I made it home, none the worse for wear. To this day I wonder how my grandmother and mother let me go out like that at night, unencumbered by the worry I have today for my kids. Ah, well. It was a different time, a different place. There were many hundreds of kids all over at the same time, because we are talking baby boomers in full and splendid form. Somewhere there is an alternative universe where kids still roam the streets without the specter of the worst kind of horror coloring the evening.

Way back then we also had "Mischief Night," as it was called in Elizabeth, NewJersey, and "Gate Night," as it was called in Rockland County. That was what we called the night before Halloween. On that night we felt it our holy obligation to do certain "things" of mild trouble making. A rose by any name is still mischief and I got into my share for sure. A bar of soap and I left many an early illustration on many a store window, and, even a few boyfriends' car windows. And did you know that Elmer's Glue and toilet paper will stick to things for, well, YEARS? Me neither.

Halloween has always held a very special place in my heart, although, for years now, it has sneaked up on me every autumn as I am getting busy with the back to school grind and before I know it, I have not had time to decorate at all.

This year was no exception. I am working on the last details for a new book I am illustrating. The book dummy sketches are due tomorrow! No time for carving pumpkins, that's for sure.

Instead, I 'll just share this old picture, my memories, and also a few items from my house that are kind-of in the spirit of the day.