I grew up in a little town on Lake Superior. Ashland was the biggest little town in the area, but still much smaller than the big city of Superior, fifty miles to the west.
As the warm fall days gave way to chillier nights, the trees around us turned to the brilliant colors of fall. The bright reds, the yellows and all the shades of brown. The smell of the leaves, the sight of birds flocking together to head south, standing together wing to wing on the telephone lines. My little sister Clare thought that they birds were warming their feet on the wires, when they perched there. That’s not such a bad idea, maybe they are warmer there.
Growing up we tried to hold onto every summer and fall day we could. We knew winter was coming, in early October, winter was well on it’s way. Although the day may warm up to the sixties in the fall sunlight, chances are the day started below freezing with a little frost on the lawn. You really had to dress in layers, otherwise you would be way to warm all afternoon.
The great kid holiday, Halloween was just around the corner. Every year we would try to come up with new costumes. This was particularly difficult for us. It’s not that we had no ideas about what to wear, it’s just that it’s hard to find a costume that will fit over your snow pants. That’s right, snow pants.
It was not at all unusual for us to have snow on and around Halloween. When you’re a little kid, your parents still made you dress appropriately for the weather, hence your costume had to fit over your snow pants or it had to incorporate our snow pants.
I remember how lucky our neighbor Jody was. Her brother Danny had a lion costume that someone made, with a tail and it fit perfectly over Jody’s snow pants and boots. It didn’t make her too bulky at all, so she could stay on a dead run while the rest of us were struggling with our sheets. I think it was the only thing we could come up with besides being a bum. Which just meant getting a dirty face and wearing an old hat. I’m telling you, snow pants just ruin a good costume.
But we went out trick or treating anyway.
In the sixties, we had banner years for candy. First, we ran as fast as we could house to house so we could get as much candy as possible. No parents were with us because they were not needed. We still knew our neighbors and we knew we were safe. So besides candy we also got, homemade fudge, angel food candy, homemade hard anise candy, brownies and the occasional carmel apple. Lots of places gave regular candy, but the older generation gave us the good stuff, the homemade stuff that your gramma made. After all, they were someone’s grandparents.
After a couple of hours at the dead run, we would drag our bulging pillowcases back home. No plastic buckets for us, everyone used a pillowcase. Besides, they held a lot.
When we got home and peeled off the layers of clothes, we would dump out the pillowcase on the floor and sort the candy. No we were not looking for razors or poison or ground glass. We were just sorting out the stuff we didn’t like. I personally hate coconut, I always have, so Mounds and Almond Joy were up for grabs from me. I loved black licorice, so I would eat Clare’s. It all worked out ok, we ate until we were full and hid the rest in our dresser.
I would usually finish my candy first, while Clare would only eat a couple of pieces per day. She was eating Halloween candy all the way until Thanksgiving. It’s really hard to have a little sister who has willpower. This was the same little girl who didn’t want to have to share sardines with anyone, so she opened a tin of them, ate a couple and then put it under the couch for safe keeping. It stunk up the living room pretty good, but the cat was happy and Clare learned about what things are not ok to put under the couch.
Halloween was a whole season to us when we were kids. Not just one night. All the way up until the big night, TV shows and movies at the old Bay Theater were all geared to be about witches and magic brew and flying brooms. Remember the show H.R. Pufnstuff? I’ve always thought that Witcheepoo would have been a great costume. And of course the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, was the scariest of them all.
Things were so easy back then. The villains on TV shows always got caught, little kids were safe outside at night and no one’s candy was poisoned or tampered with.
The leaves rustle under our feet and the dry air still warms up quickly. And if you listen, very closely at night, you can still hear the sounds of your childhood, reverberating in the evening breeze. The laughter from a game of tag played in the dark, the crunch of the leaves when someone played hide-n-seek. You can still hear it in the stillness, just listen, your childhood is calling you.....
Thanks for listening.
Anne
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