Halloween

In the 1950s, when I was a child, relatively few facets of life were commercialized. Take Halloween, for example. Almost no parents in my hometown bought costumes for their children. Masks may have been purchased at a dime store, but parents helped their children to build their own costumes around the store-bought masks. Hoboes might wear jeans with holes at the knees and carry poles with bandanas of belongings tied at the ends. Cowboys might wear hats and holsters. In my family, wrapping in a plain white sheet was considered costume enough, even if the mask had nothing to do with the sheet.

Carving Jack-o'-Lanterns on Halloween in the 1950s

One Halloween, my mother was shopping in Lafayette when I noticed a plastic mask resembling a collie’s head. The plastic’s outer surface felt fuzzy to the touch. I politely asked my mother if I could have the mask for Halloween. What joy! She consented! That year, as I skipped along the sidewalks of Pine Village, I wore my white sheet and my dog mask with tremendous pride.

We kids designed our own trick-or-treat bags from the brown paper bags that came from the grocery stores, such as the IGAs in Attica or Oxford, Smitty’s in West Lafayette, Marsh’s in Lafayette, or the A&P in Lafayette. Jack-o'-lanterns in orange and black crayons were favorite motifs, as were witches, black cats, owls, skulls, ghosts, and moons.

My classmate Alan introduced me to a noisemaker. He cut notches in the edge of a wood spool, which rotated on the end of a stick. When he pulled a string wrapped around the spool, the notched edge made a startling noise against a window pane. Of course, I had to make one immediately!

My parents preferred that my brother and I visit the homes of relatives and family friends, rather than asking for candy at the doors of people less well known. Even with such restrictions, we came away with bags containing more than enough candy! Three Musketeers bars were my favorite, but there were treats more exciting than commercially available candies.

My grandmother and my great aunt made popcorn balls that were out-of-this-world delicious! They were enormous, to boot! It seemed you were eating a popcorn ball almost as large as your head! Years later, I tried making popcorn balls. They were not nearly as good. In the process, I came to wonder how my great aunt and grandmother avoided burning the tips of their fingers, for I surely did! As far as I can tell, there is no way to form popcorn balls without coming into contact with the hot syrup. Could my ancestors have worn gloves? I doubt that they did. At any rate, the homemade popcorn balls far outdistanced the candy bars in flavor.

I recall the delightful strangeness of trick-or-treating. In the darkness, it was difficult to see where the roots of the old trees had tilted the squares of concrete in the sidewalk leading to my grandmother’s house, and I would invariably trip on them. Clouds raced across the moon, sometimes hiding it altogether. In front of my great aunt’s house were bushes that thrashed about in the cold wind. I felt there could be ghouls lurking behind them. One year, Elwyn Gray’s barn had burned not long before Halloween. The structure still stood, but there were large gaps among the blackened boards. The eerie shell stood across the street from my grandmother’s house. I was ill at ease from the scent of burned wood and the moonlight flickering between the cracks in the sides as I hurried past.

Eleanor Y. Stewart and I included many of my Halloween memories in the opening chapter of our middle grade novel Maggie Quick. Those Halloweens that I experienced in a less commercialized era are now enshrined in a book that has earned top reviews!