Holidays--Halloween

Holidays are another great childhood memory. I was so fortunate to have a mom who believed in making childhood special. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I don’t ever remember feeling deprived. Each holiday was a great occasion filled with homemade fun and many family traditions.

Halloween was one of my favorite holidays and still is. Overbrook was one big family type neighborhood. Kids could go anywhere within its bounds and feel safe. We spent months exploring our boundaries on our Schwinn bicycles in the summers. It gave us a roadmap of all the streets and cul de sacs and nooks and crannies. We knew our territory like the back of our hands. So on Halloween night, like the world, Overbrook was our oyster. We were set free to roam.

I always had a special costume for the evening, usually one that my mother had sewn for me. I was a princess or a fairy or a witch or--one year--a little red devil. Boys might be farmers or policemen or firemen or Superman. For the most part, cartoon characters were not yet commercialized in the 1960’s, and so our costumes were manufactured at home by our mothers and sprang from our imaginations rather than from the media.

Unfortunately, despite all the work that went into making our costumes, it was usually cold on Halloween night and our mothers would make us put on a coat or a heavy sweater, thus completely ruining the costume's effect!

I remember I had a big orange plastic pumpkin for a candy bucket. It held an enormous amount of candy. Sometimes it would get so heavy that I would have to come back to the house to empty it, and then start out again. We went all over the neighborhood, hollering “Trick or Treat!”, and loading up on goodies of all kinds.

Besides candy, we were often offered homemade treats such as cookies or cupcakes and cups of hot chocolate. Some of the neighbors went all out and created miniature spook houses in their driveways or entryways. I remember one house always had a witch with a bubbling black cauldron. If you were brave enough to approach her, you got a cup of hot apple cider. It was scary and delicious fun.

We went in and out of strangers’ houses with no fear. For about three hours each Halloween evening, it was pure magic.

And there would always be a Halloween carnival at our school. The dads would all come together for two or three afternoons and slap together booths out of sawn 2x4's and plywood counters, hammers ringing in the crisp fall air. The moms would decorate the booths with crepe paper streamers and balloons and tablecloths brought from home. The carnival booths were assembled around the edges of the playground, and a feeling of great excitement would tremor throughout the school for days, like an underground earthquake. I guess it must have been a fund-raiser for the PTA, but the carnival was pure magic for us.

I remember walking around the transformed playground with wide eyes, marveling at the teachers who dressed in costume, too, and playing Ring Toss or Pop the Balloons with a dart. My mom would always buy me a roll of tickets at the ticket booth and I could enjoy as many of the activities as I wanted until the tickets ran out. There was always the tantalizing smell of fresh hot popcorn and sticky-sweet candied apples wafting across the night air. And, of course, our school had one of those magical cotton candy machines. I loved to watch the pink spun sugar appear like magic to be whisked around and around onto a paper cone. It looked like fairy candy, so light and ethereal on the cone, but it quickly melted into a hot sweet burst of pure sugar once you pinched off a bit and popped it into your mouth. No matter how careful you were, your cheeks and fingers would be covered into sticky pink goo, but for once, nobody fussed at you for making a mess.

My favorite event of all was the Cake Walk held in the school library. I loved to play the Cake Walk. The cakes--dozens of them, all wrapped in plastic wrap and set on foil-covered circles of cardboard--were on display on a table as you walked into the library. Each cake was numbered. The librarian would be at the front of the room, holding up the needle on an old record player as we all got into place. Someone would have marked off a circle on the wooden library floor using black electrical tape, and sectioned it off into twenty or so spaces. Each space was numbered. The music would begin to play and we would all march in time around and around that circle until the music stopped. Then one of the PTA volunteers would reach into a bowl and pull out a number. If you were standing on the number she called, you won the cake with that number!

Halloween always seemed to me to be the start of the real holiday season. All of a sudden there was excitement in the air. The choir teacher would begin to teach us holiday songs for the Christmas program. The teachers would start us on arts and crafts projects that centered around pumpkins and turkeys and Pilgrims. Days grew shorter and night fell quickly. Mornings were cold walking to school, and we scurried along laughing at the chill. Afternoons warmed with an autumnal glow, lasting only a few hours before fading into a chilly purple gloaming, a sweet farewell to summer. It was an exciting time for a child to feel the seasons change, and to know that Thanksgiving was just around the corner.