Halloween When It Was Just Fun

The Halloween that I remember was more fun than scary. It was a wonderful part of childhood before it was renamed as a Fall Festival. It was when you grabbed a big bag and all your sisters and hit as many houses as you could in our small town of less than 4,000. No one worried about where you wandered around in the dark. If the porch light was on, they were expecting you. It was an invitation to get candy, cupcakes, apples and sometimes pennies.

My first Halloween memory is in nursery school when I insisted that I wanted to be a ghost, not just your run of the mill  ghost made with holes in the sheets – which were always white then – but a cowboy ghost. So Mother fixed the sheet oulining the eye holes in black and I put on my red cowboy hat and strapped on my holster complete with the ivory handled six shooters and went forth as the perfect cowboy ghost.

In Junior high, I went to a Halloween party in what I thought was the perfect costume, no one would ever know who I was. My head was covered with a rubber mask, nothing showed but my eyes and mouth. I wore coveralls that were stuffed with pillows so I was almost twice my size. Even my hands had gloves on them. Mother dropped me off out of sight of the front door. I didn’t speak or laugh. I was sure no one would ever know me so well covered. But when we got to guessing who people were behind their masks, my friend, Donna knew it was me. How did she know? Only my eyes and mouth we’re showing! That was enough to give me away, especially when my eyes crinkled up and twinkled when I smiled!

But the best part of Halloween was carving the pumpkins. Daddy was always in charge of that and we each got to have our own. Daddy would bring out all kinds of tools including drill bits so we could create exactly the kind of expressions that we wanted.  No matter how busy he was, that was always his to share with his girls. A row of the completed Jack o’lanterns from sometime in the mid to late sixties adorns the top of this post. He always knew just the right angle to cut the top off so it wouldn’t fall in after the candle inside had burned all night. It was wonderful messy fun that I looked forward to almost as much as the trick or treating.

May your goblins all be the huggable kind and your ghosts be only  those of fond memories! Happy Halloween!