SNGF: Most Memorable Halloween

Tonight's Saturday night genealogy fun question is to tell about a memorable Halloween. I'm going to attempt to do that and am hoping that I'm not mixing more than one year in my memory, but I think I am not. My most memorable Halloween would have been the year that all of us neighborhood kids actually managed to con enough parents into taking us out trick or treating that we spent most of the night engaged in Halloween activities. We started out in our own neighborhood. We went house to house up and down the streets of the Love Subdivision. Love Subdivision was so-named because it was built on the site of the former Love's Cow Pasture. The little white house at the corner of Boulevard Drive and Hatley Road had been the home of the Loves, according to my Mom. Our home was built in 1959. I'm sure a few of the houses in the subdivision were a little older than ours, but I really don't know when the subdivision began. I guess I've just come up with a question to research that will add a little to the background of one event in our family's lives.

After we went there, we talked my Mom into taking us to Easthaven subdivision. A lot of our school friends lived in Easthaven. My Mom would only take us to the "safe" neighborhoods, and this was one that she deemed to be so. After we got back, we talked another Mom into taking us to the Meadowbrook subdivision. We had a lot of friends who lived in that subdivision as well.

Our next stop was the East Amory Community Center. This particular year is the only year that I really remember going to the "carnival" going on there. There was a cake walk. I won a caramel cake. We bobbed for apples. I believe they had a haunted house in one of the rooms there. I think you could "fish" for candy and other things like that. We didn't stay a really long time there. However, there was one house that David and Delores wanted to go to. It was a house that I'd never trick-or-treated at before so I really didn't know what to expect when we knocked. Mrs. Hodo opened the door. She lived across from St. Andrews Methodist Church on Town and Country Lane. She invited us into her home which was dark and eery. I remember that she had us hold our hands in a dish. The texture of the item in the dish was "gross" to a youngster in the late 1960s. She told us it was eyeballs. (They were really peeled grapes.) I began to wonder what was in store for me. I was scared. She continued to take us through her incredibly spooky home which even had a casket with a skeleton. I wanted nothing more than to get out of there and fast. Delores, however, kept insisting that we stick with it because the reward at the end was worth it. I had my doubts that anything could be worth the fright we were getting, but I was too scared to leave the others in my group so I stuck with it. At the end, Mrs. Hodo took us into her kitchen where she had candy apples or caramel apples as our "treat." To be honest, I think I still wasn't sure that the fright I'd had was worth it when I would have just as soon gone to another house or two on that street and received candy instead.
However, I will admit that the apple was good.

That was my most memorable Halloween as a child.

The Great Pumpkin

Earlier tonight I asked my cat if he was looking forward to a visit from the Great Pumpkin tomorrow night. I don't know what brought childhood memories of watching Charlie Brown to mind, but I did. I was curious as to whether there was a Wikipedia article for the Great Pumpkin, and indeed, there was.

Memories of Hallowe'en

I understand that my first adventure in trick or treating came when I was still quite young. One of the neighbor kids came to the door to trick or treat. When I told him, "Let my do it," my Mom decided it was time to take me out. I was probably only a couple of years old at the time. Later I remember going with several of the other kids in the neighborhood. We'd go all over town. My mom would usually take us through our neighborhood and maybe out to the Easthaven and Meadowbrook subdivisions. Then we'd con Mrs. Baker into taking us through some others. Sometime in the midst of these visits we'd usually visit the community center where the carnival was going on. It was very similar to the carnival in Fulton that Bob described. There was bobbing for apples, a cakewalk, lots of candy, a bake sale, and fun entertainment. Miss Louise Davis, my third grade math teacher, always dressed as a witch on Hallowe'en, and she looked just like one to those of us who saw her dressed that way. She lived in an old two-story house between Amory and Smithville. I remember going there one year to trick or treat. It looked just like we were approaching a real haunted house. I fully expected the house to be full of cobwebs and have a black cat. I think the black cat was present! The one house we always wanted to make sure we went to was Mrs. Hodo's house. We'd go say, "Trick or treat." TRICK is what we always got. She'd have some "body" lying in a dark room and have us reach down and pick up its eyeballs. (These were grapes.) It really spooked us as little kids. However, the payoff for enduring the trick was a wonderful caramel or candy apple so we always put up with it.

I got to enjoy "trick or treating" a little longer than some because after my sister-in-law died and my nephew was around our house, I would take him out in the neighborhood. If he was still interested in trick or treating, we'd go to Easthaven or Meadowbrook, but he wasn't quite old enough at that point to endure the fright at Mrs. Hodo's house.

We'd always carve a jack-o-lantern. My mom would make pumpkin pie which was always a treat.

I really had no idea about the darker side of Hallowe'en back in those days. I knew that our parents wanted us home before it got too late so we had to be back by about 9 p.m. back then. They've shortened trick or treating hours in recent years, but back then people would start as soon as it got dark which was after 5 p.m. Central and between trick or treating and the carnival at the community center, we'd stay out until about 9 p.m. If Hallowe'en fell on a Sunday, we'd usually go trick or treating on Saturday. I believe that trick or treating was on Tuesday if Hallowe'en fell on a Tuesday because most of our town's church-going folks would not have participated if it were on Wednesday night. There were a lot of folks in those days that believed in being in church every time the doors were open. It's a sad commentary that we don't have that kind of commitment nowadays.

Our yard was one of the fortunate yards that rarely, if ever, got rolled. However, I know that as we went around town, we'd find evidence of mischievous folks who'd spent a lot of money on toilet paper. (Well, maybe not that much because you could buy those huge rolls of Scott tissue that felt like sandpaper for about 10 cents a roll. Rolling yards was (and probably still is) the only good use for that stuff.)

I know many families who don't allow their children to go trick or treating nowadays because they see it only as a Pagan holiday; however, I don't think it warped my friends or me. I never realized what the holiday really was. I knew there was mischief on that night--but to me in my innocence, the worst I saw was the yard-rolling and maybe a little grafitti. It was a night for fun and games and for lots of candy.

Update: I just have to show you all this post: http://www.knoxviews.com/node/6128