Halloween Horror: The Sewing Project that Wouldn't Die!!!

The column below was written quite a few years ago. I note that the Power Rangers are still going strong, so perhaps my advice will be of benefit to those who are still taking their little goblins trick-or-treating. My own progeny no longer trick-or-treat: Instead, they hand out the candy and do their best to terrify those courageous (or foolish) enough to brave our front porch, which is usually adorned with bubbling cauldrons, spooky music, and horrific costumed beasts. (My three sons make MARVELOUS beasts—it’s typecasting.)

Well, Halloween is almost here again: The most terrifying of all holidays. I know you’re all dreading it as much as I. The horror, the sense of hopelessness, the mind-numbing fear…

That’s right. We have to make costumes again.

Close to twenty years ago now, when my oldest son was about eight, he begged me to make him a “Green Ranger” costume. I offered him a roll of aluminum foil and suggested he go as a baked potato, but he wasn’t falling for it. No, it had to be the Green Ranger.

Well, I hadn’t sewed since junior high, but I reluctantly agreed, borrowing a sewing machine from a friend. This was at the beginning of October. I figured I had plenty of time.

I have three useful tips for those about to embark on a sewing project:

1. Start early. Like around Valentine’s Day.

2. Double check to make sure you have everything you need for the project. That

way you’ll only have to run back to Jo Anne’s Fabrics three or four dozen

times for stuff you either forgot or had no idea you needed in the first place.

3. Avoid anything that: a) has to be lined; b) has sleeves, and, most importantly,

c) uses lamé.

The Green Ranger’s shield was made of gold lamé. I had never worked with lamé before. In case you don’t know, lamé frays. Snags. And ravels like a—never mind. I still get the shakes just thinking about lamé. It may be pronounced “lah-MAY,” but there’s a very good reason it’s spelled the way it is.

The pattern had EIGHT pages of instructions. I kid you not. You would have thought the Federal Government was running this project.

Miraculously, the costume was finished on time (barely), and looked great. It ended up costing only three or four times as much as a ready-made costume would have. And he wore it once.

Which settles nicely the question of whether or not Halloween has satanic origins, doesn’t it?

But making the costume was a great character builder, and I learned a lot. The next year, when my son wanted to go as the White Ranger, I handed him a white sweat suit, a piece of poster board and told him to go for it. I did feel a little, nagging twinge of guilt, but because of my experience with the Green Ranger costume, I knew just what to do. I lay down until the twinge went away.

The Name Game

Names have always held an odd fascination for me. My mother despised her name, which I never fully understood. “Bessie Katherine” was a good, solid southern name, and seems pretty tame compared with that of one of her childhood friends, who was unfortunately saddled with “Highly Devine. Nevertheless, my mother shed the hated “Bessie” at the first opportunity, changed the “Katherine” to “Catherine,” and forever after went by Catherine B. Ferguson, which I considered awfully prosaic—especially considering that her own grandmother had the most, uh, spectacular name I ever heard. It was “Rachel Lucretia Cassandra Josephine Sarah Elizabeth Margaret Katherine Evelyn Dow Turner Dillard Gold. No, really. Seriously. Do you think I could make up something like that? So the story goes, my great great grandparents had 21 children, the majority of whom were wiped out in some pandemic or other, and my great grandmother was named after her dead siblings. Isn’t that charming? And, you may well ask, with such a wealth to choose from, which did she choose to go by?

Lu. They called her Lu.

My mother pored over baby name books, determined that her daughters would not have names that could easily be lampooned or twisted into ugly or insulting nicknames. No sirree, her daughters weren’t going to be made fun of, or likened to a cow, due to an ill considered name choice. After careful consideration, she settled on “Teresa Marie” and “Linda Katherine.” Unfortunately, her “best laid plans” came to naught, as my classmates gleefully locked onto my last name as the target of their barbs and I was known all through school as “Fergie.” Oh, sure, it’s a very trendy moniker now, but back then I hated it.

In a sublime example of cosmic irony, when I married, I traded in “Ferguson” for “Coffin.” Now, that’s a last name with real baggage. It elicits snorts and snickers wherever it goes. I’ve even had people blurt out, “That’s not a real name!” Pizza places have actually hung up on me when I gave them my last name… after they ASKED for it!

The only place where the name Coffin doesn’t lift an eyebrow is the island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts. In the 1640’s, four families settled on the island: The Gardners, the Folgers, the Starbucks, and—the Coffins. (Clearly we should have gone into the coffee business… but I digress.) If you show up on Nantucket and mention your name, a crowd quickly gathers, armed with genealogy charts, wanting to see how you’re related. Half the businesses on Main Street are called “Coffin” this-or-that: Coffin General Store, Coffin Real Estate, the Jared Coffin House. It’s a real hoot—if you’re named Coffin.

The name has a long, illustrious, and probably apocryphal history, tracing back to 1066, when William the Conqueror decided he wanted to own that charming little island across the channel. His knights received land in exchange for their services. (There is still a Coffin estate in England.) Anyway, some of the “Chauvin” ancestors settled in London. The name “Chauvin” became “Coffin,” and one of them must have been quite a woodworker. He became known for crafting small, ornamental jewelry boxes. They called them coffins, of course. Later the family “branched out,” as it were. So, YES, if you were wondering, coffins ARE named after the family.

It’s a tough name to grow up with, despite the history. Fergie simply pales in comparison. I just wanted to say to my kids: Just remember. Coffin is the coolest name on earth—on October 31^st.