By NICOLE CARTRETTE
Staff Writer

It’s a Polaroid picture.

Captured is a moment of which I have no recollection whatsoever. There I am at just 2 years old (maybe) with cherry red lips, curly dark hair and a sticky lollipop gripped in my tiny hand.

My short arms and legs are covered with fluffy, bright, yellow feathers. At two or so feet tall, I am an unforgettable Big Bird. Sesame Street has nothing on me.

Who needs Bert or Ernie when you have none-other-than the Man of Steel at your side? He couldn’t be 40 pounds soaking wet but my 6-year-old brother, Randy, in a bright blue and red suit and cape, is one tough Superman. His piercing blue eyes are a nice, natural complement to the costume.

He is playing with my hair with one hand and has a great big grin on his face.

I have that oh-at-least-I-am-looking-at-the-camera stare –all too familiar to me now that I am a mommy.

While I don’t remember the details of that spectacular night, I imagine it is a lot like the Halloweens of my childhood that I do remember. That warm fuzzy feeling sort of overcomes me.

Randy and I arguing about whether our jack-o-lantern’s eyes should be triangle or round. I want our pumpkin to have a happy face. He wants a scary one. He gives in to the little sis. The jack-o-lantern and I are both all smiles.

Before I know it, I can almost smell the fresh pumpkin pie baking in Grandma’s oven. Our pumpkin’s guts went to a good cause.

Colorful rustling leaves spiral through the crisp October mountain air. Glowing jack-o-lanterns light porches all around.

Mom and Dad are giddy. We are giving out the good candy in shiny wrappers by the handfuls. We spent the evening dipping big, juicy green apples in sweet gooey caramel and putting the final touches on our costumes.
Just for fun, Mom decides at the last minute she might even dress up. Some old clothes tucked deep in the closet will do –maybe a wig and hat.

Just enough to keep her neighbors and friends guessing who she is until she speaks –her Southern accent is a dead give away. They will laugh so hard their sides will hurt and chitchat before we move on to the next house.

The best costumes are homemade. Bedsheet ghosts with scissor-cut holes for eyes and bashful little black cats with mascara whiskers prowl the streets. Bright white angels with Christmas garland halos skip arm and arm with longhaired witches borrowing their mom’s broom for the night.

There are no sidewalks but we do not miss what we have never had. It’s safe to ride our bikes down the street. This little place, without one traffic light, on the wrong side of the river and the wrong side of the tracks, has all the right stuff tonight.

We know who our neighbors are and no house will go unconquered. Everyone really knows everyone and we like it that way.

It’s as exciting for the elderly folks (who don’t get out much) as it is for the kids. It’s the night of a hundred or more visitors. A cup of coffee with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. It’s the sound of your great-grandbaby saying “trick-or-treat” for the first time. It’s about the folks who run out of candy and the kids who keep coming anyway.

The candy mission, you see, is not a rushed one nor is it all about the candy. Catching up with neighbors and friends is part of the deal –a part that makes it an even sweeter one.

Thankfully, because we live in the country, my little girl will know that pumpkins grow on vines and that a real pumpkin patch is anything but pristine. On a trip recently we passed a roadside produce stand. It was the type that caters to the folks who have likely never been in a pumpkin patch in their lives and the closest they will come to baking a pumpkin pie is pulling one out of a Mrs. Smith’s box.

Here were all these perfect pumpkins scattered evenly about a perfectly manicured grassy field and a cute sign proclaiming it to be the “Pumpkin Patch.”

Convenient I thought –maybe even clever –but there is nothing quite as fun as laughing at the good and wobbly pumpkin that fooled you into thinking it was perfect in the patch. There is nothing quite like wading through prickly pumpkin vines to find your very own.

Like the less-than-perfect pumpkin you picked yourself, the home I remember from my early childhood has some blemishes. There is not a lot to do in a town that really isn’t a town. The local store carries only one kind of anything and the community doesn’t hide how precious a job is or how hard it’s been hit by plant shut downs.

What makes it different is what makes it charming and that charm really shows on Halloween. Genuine imagination and creativity are realized there on those humble streets and longtime golden friendships are celebrated like they have been for generations.

There truly is nothing quite like a Hometown Halloween. On the banks of the Kanawha River, Hometown, W.Va., a close-knit community with streets so short you can toss a candy corn from one end to the other becomes something more –something almost magical.

This Halloween I hope to share a little bit of that magic with my little girl as she experiences her first hometown Halloween –my first in 23 years.