Another Halloween behind us, and the haunted house in Harmony's old grange hall was a great success. My older son was one of the players and got to spend the entire evening with his head on a platter while eighth-grade girls tousled his hair and spilled fake blood on him. By the time he got home, he looked like he'd been ravaged by pit bulls. My younger son was dressed as a Skeleton Priest, whatever that might be, and spent the evening running around and shrieking with various other nine- through eleven-year-old boys. As the assigned player of scary piano music, I needed to dress for the part; so I came up with an outfit consisting of a late-50s A-line wool coat with a fur collar, baggy stockings and chunky shoes, a headscarf, badly applied lipstick, and glasses sliding down my nose. I looked surprisingly like Ethel Rosenberg; and because it's politics season, I should have topped off the costume with a Communist party sign pinned to my coat. But of course that wouldn't fly in Harmony, land of the free and home of the brave, so I substituted some Roosevelt New Deal propaganda and then peacefully banged out my repertoire of goblin songs, etc., while sorties of very small children in cow costumes (why were cows so popular this year among the under-two set?) haplessly pursued black and orange balloons and teenage girls displayed their ripped fishnet stockings and the Skeleton Priest hallooed and our staid elementary school secretary wandered by wearing a truly remarkable flowing curly white wig that made her a dead ringer for Montaigne.