By Doug Draper, with Halloween Eve Jitters
Posted October 31st, 2020 on Niagara At Large

Off they go, to the haunted forest.
This Halloween I find myself feeling nostalgic for those Halloweens long ago when one of the most frightening things for me was sitting in front of the TV and watching Dorothy and her friends being attached by lying monkeys during the haunted forest scene in ‘The Wizard Of Oz’.
Then there was Halloween night back in my old neighbourhood in Welland when in a group of kids dressed in our costumes, we dared each other to walk down a long driveway lined with gnarly old trees and dried up corn fields on either side to a big brick farm house to do a little trick or treating with the family that lived there, the Wilsons, who were actually quite nice.

Oh no. One of them has just grabbed Toto!
That long, dark driveway and the trees surrounding it are now long gone – covered over like so many other woods and fields and frog ponds around with urban sprawl, but the reruns of Dorothy and her friends venturing through their haunted forest are still there, and those flying monkeys are as creepy as ever.
Yet even the flying monkeys can’t compete with the second wave of that killer virus we face this fall season as Halloween Day sets in.
It is frightening enough on our side of the border. Then right next door, in the United States, there is an election looming this coming Tuesday, November 3rd , the outcome of which could mean life or death for justice and democracy in that country, and have major consequences, good or bad, for Canada and the rest of the world.
All of this is enough to make this Halloween arguably one of the scariest ones – if not the most scary – in our lifetime.
So the last thing I will say as I wish you a safe and healthy Halloween is that for the sake of our friends and neighbours in the United States, and for our sake as a neighbouring country, and for all freedom-minded countries around the world, I DON’T want to see any Halloween pumpkins or jack o’lanterns that look like this any more.
Let’s hope, for the sake of our health and the health of the planet, that enough Americans are voting to throw this monster out of office!
NIAGARA AT LARGE Encourages You To Join The Conversation By Sharing Your Views On This Post In The Space Following The Bernie Sanders Quote Below.