It was in the fall of 1963, when I was nine years old, that
I began to prepare for that ultimate costume celebration. At that time, robots were big. All a fellow
needed was a couple of big boxes, some silver paint, lots of duct tape, and
after a few craftily made cuts with one of Mom’s steak knives, it was “Danger!
Danger, Will Robinson!”
I was a skinny kid and, of course, there were no skinny
legged robots, so I decided that I would beef up my appearance with those round
tube boxes from the Quaker Oats company. I really felt brilliant as they were
just about the right size to fit inside my pants legs with one at the thigh and
another at the shin with a space in between for my knees. I finished it off
with a torso wrap of cardboard and duct tape and a box for a head.
Man, I was ready.
I grabbed an appropriate sized pillow case and set out to
plunder the neighborhood in the quest for the treasure more precious than gold:
Trick-or-treat candy.
As the evening progressed, and the pillow case filled up,
gravity began to tug at the oatmeal boxes and it wasn’t long before the space
designated for knees was no more. So, while I could still sort-of walk and drag
my loot, we decided to finish up at a couple of high porch houses along the
home stretch.
I managed the stairs and collected a popcorn ball, and
dropped it into the sack amongst caramel apples, Milk Duds, Sugar Daddies, a
black banana, 47 different chocolate bars, eighteen and a half pounds of everything
else and 38 cents in nickels and pennies from people who just wanted the
varmints off of their porch. I turned and reached out for a non-existent hand
rail and found myself in free fall without a chute.
I crashed through the prickly top of an evergreen shrub and
rolled out into the yard, a broken robot. I limped home dragging the bottom out
of the bag and leaving a trail of hard candy and licorice.
The rest of the night
would find me sorting and eating the inventory and feeding the piggy bank.
