The Halloween Tree

 

There are several things, both of Halloween and of Bradbury, that I prefer more to The Halloween Tree. But there is something about this story that has always stirred something in me, a nostalgia for something that wasn’t my experience? A childhood memory of a different life? I don’t know. Whatever it is, the idea of and the images/feelings associated with The Halloween Tree stir the place between my heart and my head, some place between my chest and the night that also holds the Mississippi, lighthouses, goldminers, Mark Twain, apple orchards, and the sound of trains-all things that are too easy to label as “Americana.” But are slivers of what makes my heart my heart when I think of the country of my birth. Included with this are the scent of Halloween candy, homemade costumes, friends parading door to door, fallen leaves, jack o’lanterns, and black crooked trees scratching their shape over the full yellow moon. This is what I think of when I see the name Bradbury, when I read the word Halloween.

parts: 2, 3, 4, 5