I received another submission for this nostalgic blog series. This one was perfectly timed for these short magical days before the High Holiday of Halloween. It's very comforting to know that there are so many of us out there who really do keep that torch burning all year long, remembering those special moments and formative years where Halloween became something larger than life to us. Something way more than just another holiday.
Joseph Mello writes, "I remember as a kid (I was born in the early 70s) we would trick or treat for what felt like hours. It was usually my older sister, me and my younger brother, and some of our cousins, and various neighbor kids would slip in and out of the group. We would cover street after street. We had plastic pumpkins as little kids, but as we got older (and greedier) we would take pillowcases. And we would walk until we filled those bad boys.
One house one year took Polaroid photos of each kid and gave them to us in little folders to keep. Another lady used to make popcorn balls and give them to us with little bags of candy. She was really nice.
I remember people trying to scare each other. Making up stories about houses that seemed okay during the day but a hundred times scarier at night. One house had a lady we never saw and someone made up a story about her creeping out only at night to clean her yard.
Another house had what, in retrospect, was some strange piece of art, I'm sure. But my brother and I convinced ourselves it was a man who sat with his back to the window and NEVER moved. Frozen, staring into the room. Creeped ourselves out.
One Halloween, a cousin convinced us all to go into the cemetery. Our house shared a property line with a cemetery, and when we were kids it was open, like we could walk from our yard and it just slowly became cemetery. Eventually, the cemetery built a chain link fence around the property to keep troublesome kids out. But that Halloween, we went in, all scared but determined. We made it through to a place where they had left a lot of open land and built a statue with religious figures and a giant cross. My cousin then proceeded to act like she was possessed and writhe around on the grass. We all took turns scoffing at her and totally buying into it. Was a freaky walk back home, in the dark, with leaves crunching under our feet. Creepy night and it was just what we wanted, deep down.
Back home those nights, we would spill out our bags and do the trading of likes and dislikes with the others. Fun to try and get what we loved and ditch what we hated.
All in all, good memories. Those years felt endless at the time, and now feel like a lifetime ago. Was good to relive the experience second-hand through my kids, but even they are grown now. I am just the candy giver now. Hope there are some kids getting the spooky Halloween night experiences."
Thanks, Joseph! This sounds a lot like what the Halloweens of my youth were like! Thanks so much for sharing these memories.
For anyone interested in submitting, you can email me at pumpkinrot @ gmail . com (remove the spaces, of course!)
And thanks, Mr. Macabre, for the suggestion to do this blog series! It's the gift that keeps on giving!
