In the fearful nation, the playgrounds have disappeared, even on Main Street, where community still lives. The new playgrounds are portable or fenced, rubber or soft, supervised and shoeless, done in by lawyers and anxious Boomer parents. Slides and twirl-a-rides are almost extinct.

I wondered at this idea of a Halloween thing, but someone explained to me that there are very few safe and risk-free public things for children to do. To go in the Bouncy House, you have to be small, take your shoes off,  only go in three or four at a time. Even then, the House is encircled by parents watching.

There is not much unsupervised play left in the lives of children. Even the dogs have play groups with parents watching. Tonight in my town, there will be a Halloween Parade, then some trick or treating on Main Street.

In the country, it is still possible to see kids alone, doing things by themselves, walking to school, riding bikes. Today on Halloween, the Hubbard Hall Arts Center had a Halloween Fair, the Bouncy House was the centerpiece.

It is ironic to me, still, as I spent most of my childhood by myself, nobody was ever watching.  The lives of children and grown-ups was quite separate, different worlds, neither one knew too much about the other. Today is Halloween, of course, and I couldn’t help but thinking the crypt where i used to go on North Main Street in Providence to hide out, listen to my portable  radio, read my comic books. That was where I learned that Buddy Holly had died in a place crash.

There was an unlocked gate, a heavy iron door that opened, and four or five iron caskets stacked on top of one another. There was a gorgeous skylight that made it easy to read my comic books or those I had taken from the library. It was a good place to hide,  and kids were expected to fill their own time. The Irish kids from Hope Street never chased me there or caught me there, no parents came or disapproving teachers.

I never thought of the cemetery as a scary place, it was actually my safe place. A place of imagination and radioactive memory. Once in awhile, the police would catch me there and bring me home, but my parents  usually weren’t there, and didn’t seem to really mind or care much that I was hanging out in some other family crypt.

The police weren’t too upset either. There was no talk of being arrested, the officers usually gave me a lollipop and old me to stay out of the cemetery. They seemed to worry about the cemetery, which didn’t want me hanging out there, but there was no talk of my being in danger, and I don’t think I was.

One day I’ll go back and bring flowers there for the family, to thank them for the sanctuary. Aloneness can be a gift, it is true that if you are comfortable with yourself, you can never really be lonely. It is also true that aloneness is fuel for creativity, when nobody tells you what to think, you can think, when nobody is talking you, you learn to talk to yourself, you make up your own stories.

I am wary of nostalgia. I had a lot of freedom when I was a kid, but too much really, I did things I should not ever have done. I am lucky I never hurt anyone or hurt myself. Nostalgia is, of course, a generational trap. The kids in the Bouncy House will surely look back on their time today as pure and sweet and unsullied by the changed lives of their own children.

I did want to take my shoes off and join in, bounce around the Bouncy House, but that would really have frightened the children, probably their parents too.