Saw an excellent post over at K.O.'s The Skeleton Key blog regarding October 30th - that night before Halloween. You know the one... where kids are supposed to roam the streets late at night, looking for houses to soap up and trees to bomb with rolls of toilet paper. That night where crimes are committed in cities across America, and the orange glow of vandal fires can be seen for miles (like in The Crow).
In her post, K.O. mentions there are different expressions for this night depending on where you live in the country: Trick Night, Mischief Night, Gate Night, Cabbage Night, Devil’s Night, or Goosy Night. In some parts of this country, it's not even a thing. In the town where I grew up, we called it Mischief Night. And we feared it. When I was in grade school, we used to talk about it a lot as the Halloween season approached. We imagined older kids targeting our houses, or even us (if we happened to be out on the streets that night). Then we would talk about what WE would do if WE were the bad kids. "We should go soap up some car windows!" (How did that even get invented?) Then we'd discuss toilet-papering someone's tree. "Maybe that old couple on the block?!" (I once heard someone comment that you immediately endorse capital punishment when you find a tree on your property covered in toilet paper.) And then, of course, the throwing of eggs. That one always felt so gross to me and was the most feared. To be Egg'd seemed like the worst possible assault to suffer. But we talked a lot about that one as well... whom we should Egg... and what porch or what car should be bombed.
So we made all of these elaborate plans and talked at length about the dangers of Mischief Night, but we never followed through with any of our plans, nor did we ever hear about any actual mischief or vandalism carried out on some poor homeowner. It's a very strange notion: to worry about something when there is no historical data to support it occurring. I suppose that's the nature of worrying, but then again it IS a known "holiday" after all... a prank holiday.
One time when I was in eighth grade, my brother and I must have appeared bored on Halloween Eve, the 30th of October. My mother observed this listlessness and placed an egg on the kitchen table. She suggested we take it outside and find a target on this night of nights. Keep in mind my brother and I were the antithesis of mischief. And keep in mind my parents were both extremely cheap, so wasting an egg in this fashion was as shocking then as it is now to write about.
Even more shocking was how thrilling this concept was to us. It was instant exhilaration. And even more shocking still was that all of us knew the target, without ever saying a word. For, you see, there was this one house up the block, and inside that house was an older couple, probably in their sixties. This couple hated everyone and everything. And during any given day of any given year, they MUST have been sitting by their window perpetually, since the reaction time to stepping on their grass and them screaming out their front door was almost simultaneous.
The old couple lived next door to family friends of ours and we'd play in the backyard and pray the ball wouldn't bounce over the fence and land in their yard - which it of course did, many times. And each time, literally every single time, this crazed woman would fly out of the back door and scoop up the ball and take it into the house. And my friend's parents would never say anything to get them back.
Well, the plan was set. My brother would ride me up the street as I stood on the back of his bike. We would go way past the house and make some loops and figure eights and give the appearance of having casual harmless fun. Upon our return back down the street, we would launch the egg at their wooden garage door, which was below their living room windows. All the row homes in our neighborhood were like this - three stories, with a garage on the ground level.
The figure eight part worked like a charm.
As we swung around and drove by the house for our bombing run, I dropped off the back of the bike so I could throw the egg from a stabilized position. I threw this thing as hard as I could without smashing its delicate shell in my hand. The egg took off towards the garage. As we both watched the white streak in the air, it did something that looked like those cheap 3D movies where something is flying and bouncing on an invisible string. The egg wobbled and swooped up really fast at the last moment and hit the center window above the garage. The window shook with the loudest thud I've ever heard. Praise the gods of this horrid holiday that the window didn't break. But the egg sure did.
My brother fired off down the street on his bike with me running as fast as I could behind him (I think at one point I was running next to him). We had never been so scared. We dropped the bike on the lawn and shot inside our house. I think we waited for those awful old people to show up at the front door demanding some kind of justice for our crime.
Thankfully, no one ever showed. And that Mischief Night was the only Mischief Night in our street's history where such a prank occurred. It's weird to ponder that my own mother (not me) essentially was the reason Mischief Night continued to cause anxiety in these parts. I'm sure that mean elderly couple ranted to neighbors about the assault on their home. And I'm sure folks looked at the yellow and white mess on the window and in the driveway and were thankful they survived another Mischief Night unscathed.
