Billy, the kingpin kid in our neighborhood, seemed to know everything about the witch who lived in a tiny hut at the bottom of the steep, wooded ravine that dead-ended my street. We believed everything Billy said. He was smarter and older than any of us — almost a seventh-grader.
Billy's stories about spells "Bruna" would cast if she didn't like you terrified us. We insisted on hearing every gruesome detail. Billy would oblige, but only after much pleading and promises never to tell our parents "upon pain of death."
So real was Billy's witch to us that I told him I'd seen smoke rising from the bottom of the ravine. I don't recall if I actually did. What mattered was impressing Billy.
"Maybe you're not so blind," Billy teased.
That was the same year, you see, that I had started wearing eyeglasses. In the summer I'd borrowed Mom's violin bow for archery practice. Violin bows don't function well with arrows made from peeled tree branches and one backfired into my left eye, damaging the retina.
Mom picked out a hideous pitch-black, thick, horn-rimmed frame. I hated wearing the glasses for all the reasons you can imagine a 7-year-old would. The first moment I put them on, she warned me how "they'd better not leave my face."
I begged her to not make me wear them on Halloween, dressed up as a hobo and all. I'm sure I said something convincing like, "Hobos don't wear eyeglasses."
Back then, most of our costumes were homemade by moms, with some input from their sons and daughters. Most were simple. Ghosts — white sheets with holes. Supermen — blue-dyed Fruit of the Loom undershirts with the iconic "S" drawn with red lipstick and a couple of towels or pillowcases stitched together for capes.
