Thursday, October 15, 2009

Halloween Memories

When I was growing up our neighborhood teemed with kids around my age. On the other end of the spectrum were widowed older ladies who doted on children. It was a veritable gold-mine situation on holidays - Halloween in particular. Halloween night meant about five or six 'haunted houses.' We youngsters were already jacked up from parties at school, where we dressed in our costumes for that night and exchanged candy, and ate the cupcakes and cookies bought for the classroom. That night we seldom ate dinner, just picked at our meal and anticipated popcorn balls, mulled cider, candied and caramel apples, and CANDY galore that we were allowed to shovel to our bag by the fist-full. One house handed out rolls of shiny quarters!

Dad being an architect meant he liked to put his creative bent into some of our earlier costumes, before we got old enough to choose our own outfits. One Halloween I remember towing a white cardboard church as tall as a trike behind me. It had 'stained glass' windows we made from ironing crayon shavings between layers of wax paper pressed together. (Turned out great). The church was illuminated by a large flashlight positioned inside, which made the windows glow as I trailed it behind me while it rolled along on a wheeled platform.

Another Halloween when I was nine, he turned me into a cardinal (the bird), with large cardboard cutout wings with feathers attached and a paper mache head it took a few weeks to create. It was quite effective. I ended up hating that costume. The head was cumbersome and hot, and I couldn't see well through the 'beak.' And at every stop I was retained by adoring blue hairs, "Fred! Fred come see! And get the camera!" As my gang flitted away to the next house, I had to skip a few houses to race to join up with them a few houses ahead. Curses! I moaned everytime I was oohed and aahhed over. This costume was donated to our children's theater's costume department afterwards. From that time on, I have never worn another mask of any kind.

9 comments:

Grizzly Bear said...

Sorry I haven't commented earlier , man it has been a busy few weeks. Thanks for taking the time to comment on my blog.

My fav for Halloween as a child was my neighbor Esther's homemade popcorn balls. Yes i love chocolate but I always looked forward to those balls. ROFL..

Happy Thursday!

adrienzgirl said...

masks are creepy!

Unknown said...

We never went trick or treating as kids. We lived in the country where the houses were way too far apart. But I remember my mom always had lots of candy and popcorn for us. I don't think we minded no trick or treating.

Aleta said...

Awwwww.... do you have any pictures? I think the costumes sounded REALLY cool!

Deb said...

I hated masks. Especially those plastic ones that fogged up from your breath and caught your eyelashes in their slitty little eye holes :)

Love what you're doing at Wingspur!

http://howtobecomeacatladywithoutthecats.blogspot.com said...

Don't you just hate the blue hairs who slow you down. I hope they gave you extra treats! (But they probably didn't.)

Stacey J. Warner said...

Wonderful memories...it brough back a few of my own.

S3XinthePantry said...

wow your Dad really got into the costume design.
I lived in the exact same type of neighborhood - lots of new families and lots of grandparents that loved kid. Though they were more likely to hand out single quarters not an entire roll (the tooth fairy didn't even give that much money!).
One of the "big" houses gave out whole candy bars and we all tried to go to the door 2 or 3 times to see if we could get more than one!

Melissa B. said...

I have some spectacular Halloween memories, too. My nephew was born on October 29, so my SIL does a Haunted House every year for his birthday...pretty awesome stuff!