The Martians are coming! The Martians are coming!

The day before Halloween 1938 a young man named Orson Wells made an adaptation of the classic H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds for the radio. To make it more dramatic he decided to broadcast it in the form of news broadcasts. A portion of the audience concluded that it was hearing an actual news account of an invasion from Mars. People packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Martian poison gas, in an attempt to defend themselves against aliens. Many water towers were shot that evening by people believing they were Martian tripods attacking them. It would later be called The Night That Panicked America. It seems every year since radio stations rebroadcast it as a Halloween treat.
On the day before Halloween 1971 , at the tender age of 6 I knew none of this. All I knew or cared about was that for some reason the area I was living in was splitting trick and treating up into 2 nights, October 30, and of course October 31. I bugged my parents into letting me go on both nights and eventually they caved in. So on that beautiful Saturday evening my father took me to the side of town where trick or treating was allowed.
On the way there Dad kept fumbling with the radio trying to find a station that wasn't playing "That damn rock and roll". He stopped when he found a news broadcast about some "explosions" on the planet Mars. I was too excited about the prospect of all that extra candy to really listen too closely. My Dad listened with a slight smile on his face.
We got to where we were going and I got out and ran to a few houses. My goal was to fill my pillow cushion full with candy. It took just a few minutes for me to hit the few houses on that street with their lights on. As I got back into the car Dad was still listening to that news station. He told me that a "huge flaming object " had just landed on a farm in New Jersey. Dad said he thought it was a meteor. A big one.
Now this got my attention. Like most 6 year old boys , 2 things interested me, Astronomy, and Dinosaurs.
As Dad drove to the next block he said "It's probably nothing."On the radio,the reporter and some famous scientist(who I had never heard of before) were driving out to see it. The scientist kept saying he was sure it wasn't from Mars.
"That's Good" dad said.
As we got to the next block I was a little less eager to get out, now really interested in what was going on. But the call of candy could not be denied .I ran up and down the block in record time getting all the candy that could be gotten. I had almost forgotten about the meteor when I got back in the car. It seemed the reporter and scientist had gotten to the field where it had crashed while I was out trick or treating.(pretty good timing on their part.)As Dad drove(slowly) to the next block over all hell broke loose.
It was beginning to turn out that this was no meteor! This might be a spacecraft of some sort!
"I knew it" Dad said.
I was now in no hurry to get out and trick or treat anymore. As the reporter talked the top of the "craft" opened. The reporter described the aliens coming out of the ship.
"Good heavens, something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake," he said, in an appropriately dramatic tone of voice. "Now it's another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing's body. It's large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face. It...it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate....The thing is raising up. The crowd falls back. They've seen enough. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can't find words. I'm pulling this microphone with me as I talk. I'll have to stop the description until I've taken a new position. Hold on, will you please, I'll be back in a minute."
It's nothing short of a miracle that I didn't pee my pants.
Within a few short minutes the reporter was back. The reporter sounded afraid, and Dad kinda looked afraid. The reporter was now talking about 3 guys walking up with white flags as a show of friendship for the Martians."What?"Dad said. "You can't trust any Martians!"
It seemed Dad was right. The Martians promptly shot some ray beams at the 3 guys, and then turned it on the rest of the crowd. The reporter talked about the ray moving toward him. Then static.
I was now very very scared. Dad put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said "World's coming to an end. You need to get all the candy you can. It may be all the food we have to live on." With a trembling lip I got out of the car and ran as fast as I could from house to house. The people at the door were treated to a crying ghost begging for candy. I finished that block in record time.
By the time I finished the second block the Martians and petty much destroyed our Army and Air-force. As I got back from the third and last block they were marching on New York City. A new reporter described the Martians spraying gas and the residents were "Running like rats into the east river."
" I hope we have enough candy to live on "Dad said very sadly. Dad then turned the radio off saying he just couldn't listen anymore." Lets go home before the Martians start spraying gas."
My brothers and sister were sitting in the living room watching, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown".The front door flew open and I came tearing in screaming at the top of my lungs. I ran up the stairs and into my bedroom. As I dove under the bed it never occurred to me that no one else seemed bothered by the end of the world.
It was only a few minutes later that my Mom came upstairs and told me that it was all a cruel joke. It was nothing more then a old radio broadcast. Her Dad was fooled by it 33 years earlier. It was just Dad "having some fun with me."
Oh yeah and everyone was downstairs eating my candy.
Looking back on it, was I upset and embarrassed? You bet. But every year after , until well after college, a Halloween never went by without me catching "War of the Worlds" on some radio station.
And I did get a record amount of candy that night.