I was a witch for seven years. For Halloween, that is. Which I loved. And no, my ex-husband did not ghostwrite this column. Though he would love to. And despite the fact that I’ve just flown by Halloween, there are some skeletons that stay in my closet.

So, that’s a good segue into pondering the now infamous day of witches and ghosts that transformed our sleepy Conejo Valley into ghoulish graveyards galore topped with electrified pumpkins wired into Sony generators beside Target’s finest styrene mummies doing the twist to Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters.” The simple life, right? Sure. Love it.

If there’s something strange In your neighborhood Who you gonna call—

Ghostbusters

By the time you read this, you’ve probably removed the shaving cream from your mailbox. And the pumpkin mousse splattered in your street. Martha Stewart would have scraped it off, baked it and turned it into Pumpkin Bites a la Turf. Do you feel guilty? And you threw it in the trash. What a waste.

Me? With the Santa Ana winds blowing and the announcement that I can now buy a casket at WalMart, I thought about the Halloweens on Adair Street as a kid with my feet firmly planted in midair and my one universal Halloween costume stashed under my bed.

I mused about the sixth grade, when, after listening to the World Series on my transistor radio and pulling the misplaced sponge curlers out of my hair, I performed a pre-Halloween test run to see if I could squish the bod into my multi-expandable, oh-so-userfriendly witch costume for the seventh consecutive year.

And you think Roger Maris made the record books. Voilà! Did it . . . thus transformed from “Kindergarten Witch” to “Braces, Pimples and Attitude Witch” in the blink of an evil eye.

If there’s something weird And it don’t look good Who you gonna call—

Ghostbusters

Oh yeah, I looked weird. But loved it. Around 4 p.m. on Halloween Day, my father, the chemical engineer who longed to be a professional hockey player or Count Basie, cruised in the door ready to perform surgery on our singular fat pumpkin purchased from the Shopping Bag for 35 cents.

No pumpkin patches in the San Gabriel Valley. What was to become a pumpkin patch was a spiffy vacant lot where we played capture the flag and hid Susie Allison’s favorite pink PF Flyers under her Archie comic books.

Back to the scene of the carving. As if he were performing a bypass on the president, DaddyO set up his pumpkin-carving station on the kitchen table beside the ugly olive green salt and pepper shakers Mom got with Blue Chip stamps.

After covering every square inch of the table with the Los An geles Times (not the Sports section—Jim Murray and Sandy Koufax never got saturated with pumpkin goo), he meticulously carved a goofy, buck-toothy grin using my mug as the model. They didn’t call me Bugs Bunny for nothin’. At least those fangs were good for something.

Oh, let there be light. To illuminate the Kirby-o’-lantern, we dug through the drawers in the dining room, searching for a “shorty” candle to be placed inside the cavern my father carefully designed using his slide rule, router and probably a little threein-one oil. He used that on everything. If it needed to be fixed, it got a good “whack” and a little three-in-one oil.

Back to the pumpkin goo excavation.

If you’re seeing things Running through your head Who can you call—

Ghostbusters

By the time the lantern was lit . . . and so was Dad . . . we hit the streets, hauling out Mom’s old pillowcases, leaping over lawns laced with manure and avoiding the crabby lady who gave out apples and advice. And made us sing. What a weirdo. Later, lady.

When the lights were going out and the itch from my witch costume was driving me nuts, we headed home for an evaluation of the haul, first carefully perused by Daddy-O. No, not to check for anything unsafe, but to get the first run at the biggest Hershey bar and a renegade box of Cracker Jack.

And no, today I don’t dress up because I figure I look pretty scary already. Oh just give me an 8-ounce Snickers bar with a chaser of Milk Duds. Hold those plastic chewy things. Skittles? Eeeuuw. Let me tell you something Bustin’ makes me feel good I ain’t afraid of no ghost

I ain’t afraid of no ghost You can reach Elizabeth Kirby at kirby@theacorn.com.