Remembering old friends from TV youth

Living in a rural, farm community tends to put a damper on a little girl’s Halloween. This was… Living in a rural, farm community tends to put a damper on a little girl’s Halloween. This was the case during my early years, the years before my overprotective mother finally gave in and let me loose with friends who were fortunate enough to reside in the suburbs.

While other kids were running wild through their neighborhoods, I stayed at home, knowing that the only people who would visit my house were the ones interested in bagging up cow manure meant for the windshield of some poor sap’s BMW.

Like always though, I had the television to keep me entertained, and there was nothing better than television during Halloween time. When October rolled around, the screen came alive with commercials showcasing the newest becostumed McDonald’s Mcnugget toys or the vast array of cartoon breakfast-cereal mascots who had suddenly become mummified, vampirized or the living dead. Companies were promoting the crap out of their Halloween items, hoping to whip every American kid into a decadent frenzy.

But then there were the holiday specials, the old friends that returned year after year. Unlike the parade of commercials, these half-hour gems promised nothing but the guarantee of a few laughs and scares, all without having to purchase a Happy Meal or the box of Lucky Charms with neon-green ghost marshmallows.

Now that my trick-or-treating days are over — something I eventually gave up when old people started demanding that I “grow the hell up” — I find myself coming full circle, back to my precious television.

However, I now find that the specials that comforted me through many an uneventful Halloween no longer exist. It’s difficult to imagine that the networks would give up on their holiday workhorses, those wonderful, animated ratings-grabbers. For those who never had the opportunity to experience the apparently late great Halloween special, now replaced with some sh–ty ghost story starring Anne Hache (which is appropriate, because there’s nothing more dead than that woman’s career), I can’t help but feel a responsibility to continue the legacy. Therefore, in memory of my ignored comrades, I ask that everyone remember back to childhood and the two greatest Halloween specials ever aired: “Garfield’s Halloween Adventure” and “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

Garfield and Odie are on a pirate-ghost-infested island filled with candy. It’s a delicious animated treat that should live on forever. In “Great Pumpkin,” Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy and the gang are all up to their usual mundane-but-hilarious acts as they move through a few different problems for each character in the various sub-plots that fill this animated special.

Regardless of their differences, I will miss both of these old friends equally. Maybe someday they will return triumphantly to syndication, once again giving children a reason to fear pirate-ghosts and the threat of an airborne pumpkin-man pelting them with candy. Until then, I will continue writing my angry petitions to the networks, and, of course, searching eBay for that one ratty VHS copy of something that my precious television has failed to provide for me.