In 1988, my husband Terry and I decided to make Rainbow Trout costumes for Halloween.

An artist, Terry shaped the heads with chicken wire. The first head looked like a chicken.

Trying again, Terry shaped two trout heads that passed inspection. We covered the chicken wire with masking tape. Terry painted the tape with white gesso primer that shrinks art canvases. Gesso made the surface smooth and tight.

Inside the masks, I pressed pink Kleenex against the sticky tape to look like the inside of a fish mouth. We made it up as we went.

Terry used a spray gun to paint the distinctive rainbow pattern on the masks. He cut Nerf balls in half with a bread knife, painted the eyes and glued them on. Then sprayed clear shellac to make the masks look wet.

Meanwhile, I sewed back fins that I stitched to the back of our fishing vests. The back fins waved back-and-forth as we walked. Also sewed side fins to pin to our shoulders. Terry painted the fins.

"Plastic forks!" I cried, elbowing Terry in bed in the middle of the night. "What?" "For the teeth." We broke off white plastic fork tines, gluing them in the upper and lower jaws. Across our chests we strung silver spoons used for trolling.

Painted our faces black to recede inside the masks.

At first, the heads fell down because they were so long. Solved this by stringing stout twine across the chicken wire inside the back of the heads. Behind the twine, I shoved a large dry sponge. This comfortably held up the masks to see out the mouth.

Finally, we painted our faces black to recede inside the masks. We dressed in all white. Wore fishing vests and borrowed waders. Over 1,000 people entered the Monster Mash costume competition on Halloween night.

"Who's in there?" a male jackass demanded, trying to yank open the jaws. "Let go of my mask!" I yelled, alarmed. I twisted away and escaped. After that, I stayed close to Terry.

Never broke the magic.

I think we won partly because we stayed in character. We danced cheek-to-cheek (gill-to-gill) and the Swim. It was hot in that room. Other people took off their heads. We never broke the magic because the fins were pinned to our shoulders. At most, we removed our gloves.

We won a free trip to Reno, Nevada for New Year's Eve. Neither of us gamble. Instead we rented a car and drove north to Lake Tahoe.

We had a great time snowshoeing and saw the Pointer Sisters' concert on New Year's Eve.