Rant #3,566: Running Scared

Today, it is Halloween.

Boo!

It is really "boo hoo" because this day isn't what it used to be.

In our old house, no kids came to our door for a couple of years, the final years we lived there.

Now, in our apartment in a 55-and-over community, I seriously doubt anyone will come to our door, even though there are a few younger kids who live here.

No, it just isn't the same.

Halloween is just another day on the calendar.

But that does not mean that I don't have great memories about when Halloween was a REAL holiday, for kids like me, way back when.

To get into the Halloween spirit, I decided to watch one of my favorite Little Rascals/Our Gang shorts, one that doesn't really have anything to do with Halloween--but scared me pretty badly as a little kid.

"Little Sinner," a 20-minute short from 1935, is one of the series shorts that used to be shown on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, and then beginning in the late 1960s, it became one of the "banned" shorts, due to its content.

But when I saw it as a very little kid, I was scared out of my pants with everything going on ... but as I got older, I just laughed and laughed at all the goings on, and still do.

In this short, it is Sunday, and that means it is a day for the Gang to go to church (even Jerry Tucker, one of the few real-life Jewish Gang-sters, but that's another story for another time).

All the Gang--Alfalfa, Jerry, the kid who later became "Woim"--are at the church, but where's Spanky?

He is with the still-androgynous Buckwheat and Spanky's "new" little brother, Porky, and he is playing with a new fishing rod, telling the younger kids that even though it was Sunday, he was going fishing.

He shows up at the church to show his face to the pastor, hiding his fishing rod in his clothes and telling the pastor he has "rheumatism" to cover for his awkward walk.

As the pastor goes into the church, the Gang tells Spanky that if he doesn't go to church on Sunday, "Something is going to happen to you!"

Spanky runs away as the other kids enter the church, and goes with Buckwheat and Porky to some local pond, where the trio invariably gets kicked out by its caretaker.

The trio wander around in the forest, and with the skies dsrkening during an eclipse, meet up with a Baptist church congregation doing a baptism ceremony in another body of water.

The hooting, hollering and screaming scare Spanky and the others to the point that they run back to the church, pursued by a white sheet that came from the baptism that they think is a ghost.

They arrive when the church service is over, and Spanky learns a scary lesson about going to church every Sunday morning.

That is a brief synopsis of the plot, but the scariest part of the episode--and why it was not shown for many years--revolves around the baptism.

This is a baptism made by a black church congregation, and you see every stereotype possible in these scenes, from the Steppin' Fetchit nature of the black actors with speaking parts all the way through to the actual baptism, where the actor being dunked in the water hoots and hollers more like he is possessed and is part of an exorcism rather than a baptism.

And the big, saucer eyes of Buckwheat are in full display here, as are his dreadlocks, which rise in the air because he is so scared.

Sure, this thing is as full.of stereotypes as can be, but it is so funny to see the kids' reactions to something that they can't possibly understand.

I just laugh and laugh at this, because it is really funny.

But the baptism itself is pretty scary, and I can see why as a kid, I was scared when the guy getting dunked starts yelling and screaming.

And with all that is going on, you can see why the short wasn't shown for many years.

But watching it as an adult, and watching it nearly 90 years after it first came out, you can see how well done this short actually is, and you go with it from beginning to end.

So that is how I prepared for Halloween, a holiday thst today reflects our times just like Halloween reflected our times when I was a kid.

I loved Halloween when I was a kid, but I don't really love it much now.

But go watch "Little Sinner" ... not a Halloween short per se, but it just might give you the creeps--

While you laugh and laugh and laugh some more.

https://youtu.be/5wSQMNw3KZ8?si=h02czMK6GPDkHMS1

And as for the Yankees ... Halloween came a day early for them.

No treats, just tricks.

"Boo hoo" is right.