Tim GULLA LEDGER STAFF WRITER I was walking around the Wal-Mart the other day and just had to stop to admire the commotion in the Halloween costume aisle.

People were tearing through all the scary masks, face paints and cloaks for just the right look.

While I appreciate Halloween as a fun day of the year, and the convenience of getting a ready-made costume from a department store, it struck me that Halloween has become somewhat too easy today.

Chances are good that anyone 30 and up didn't have access to ready-to-wear halloween costumes when they were younger.

Your mothers likely went to a local fabric shop to get all the material and sewed them together for you.

And hand-medowns were just as common.

Like my mother, my aunt would make costumes for her children, who were a few years older than me. Occasionally, I would have to wear for Halloween what my cousin Paulie wore the previous year. But it was all good.

Pirates happened to be en vogue in 1977, when I was in kindergarten, so even a hand-me-down pirate costume with a cardboard sword wrapped in tin foil to give it a realistic metallic look, was awesome.

Besides, Paulie lived 12 miles away, so no one would really put two and two together and, I think, most kids could have cared less where someone's costume came from anyway.

Eventually, though, there comes a time in most young people's lives that it's just uncool to have your mother make a Halloween costume for you.

So you did it yourself. Want to be a ghost? Step 1. Take your bed sheet off your bed.

Step 2. Cut out two lopsided eye holes so you can see.

Step 3. Check to make sure the sheet doesn't have Buck Rogers on it, or any cartoonish prints, since it ruins the ghost motif.

Step 4. Put the Buck Rogers sheet with two lopsided eye holes back on your bed and hope no one notices.

Want to be a robot?

Step 1. Duct-tape a few boxes together into the shape of a robot.

Step 2. Spray-paint the boxes, as well as the carpet or floor on which you're working, silver or grey.

Step 3. Cut out two lopsided eye holes so you can see.

Step 4. Fall down the steps while wearing a bunch of duct-taped boxes dripping with wet paint.

Step 5. Haunt your street as the ghost of Buck Rogers. I never thought I'd get to the point where I'd be telling "In My Day..." stories, but it seemed apropos when I sat down to write a column.

That's primarily because one of the things that pops out most in my mind is that none of the costumes when I was young were nearly as grisly or horror-related as they are today.

There are many people who complain that today's generation is desensitized to violence and gore. A lot of that can be attributed to video games and ever-lowering television standards, some say.

And they may be on to something.

In my day, if a girl wasn't dressed as a princess, there were 3-2 odds she'd be dressed as as a ballerina or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

And if a boy wasn't a pirate, or a bed sheet ghost, the odds were 1-5 he was stumbling around — blindly, that is, since he couldn't see out of the eye holes — in an Amana Radar Range box.

Today, on the other hand, it seems you have to dress up like the killer from the Scream movies, the killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, the killer from the Halloween movies, or just any old killer in general, for Halloween to be successful.

You have to have fake blood, fake scars, fake body organs, fake butcher knifes covered in fake blood, and, of course, fake severed limbs.

Oh, did I mention the fake blood?

The increasing crotchety old man growing inside my mind says, "Give it time. That stuff won't be fake in just a few years."

Imagine little Billie, Suzie or Frankie ringing your doorbell in 2020.

"Trick or treat," they yell as you answer the door.

"What if I don't give you a treat," you ask, inquisitively.

And little Billy responds by slapping you across the face with an arm he just dug up from the cemetery.

Good laughs can be heard all around. "That was a good one Billy," you say with a guffaw.

I hope it doesn't come to that point.

So in the interest of good old-fashioned Halloween fun, I surely hope the ghost of Buck Rogers, a few princesses, a few robots and a hand-me-down pirate or two can be seen in Gaffney tonight.

Have a safe Halloween everybody.