I haven't "Trick or Treated" in over 50 years, but I still like Halloween. I've always liked it. Of course, it's more fun now watching young "kiddies" including my grandchildren, so it's more of a "spectator sport" to me. For many years, including several into adulthood, I was a participant.
The early years were like most other kids. We enjoyed "dressing up" and heading out in the neighborhood and getting enough candy to last until Christmas. It was a carefree time and we would get about as many "home made" treats as the commerical ones. Our parents didn't go with us and they never worried about us either. They knew pretty much everyone in the neighborhood and didn't worry about any adults doing anything to harm us kids.
We would get things like home made fudge, popcorn balls, brownies, apples and things like that. I remember Arthur Morris (a gentleman down the street) would give us some of the hottest jawbreakers I've ever had. He'd always give us two. One would go in the sack and he'd make us unwrap and eat the other one there on his porch. We'd pop them in our mouth and for a couple of seconds they tasted good, but then the "hot" part would kick in. He'd see the sweat break out on us and laugh and get his wife, Alice out there to share in the fun but she didn't quite see the humor in it he did. She'd usually give us all a glass of water to cool our palates and we'd be on our merry way, none the wiser.
After a few years, we outgrew the "Trick or Treating" stage and did other things on Halloween. Most of it was harmless and mischievous but we enjoyed it. We spent a lot of time dressing up like monsters and scaring the fire out of the young trick or treaters that came to our house (or a neighbor's house, depending on where we were). It was a lot of fun making fake bats and dressing up like mummies and hiding in the honeysuckle vines just down the street and when a group of smaller kids came wandering by with their bags of candy, we'd jump out into the street and scream and holler. Some of them just stood there and cried but most took off running for their lives. Some of the smaller ones were accompanied by their parents and we'd even scare them. It was all in good fun.
Later, we used the same talents going out to a graveyard and hiding behind headstones. We'd leak out the word at school that a ghost would mysteriously appear on Halloween night at the old cemetery out by the river and we'd "don" our sheets and flashlights and head out there just before dark. Sure enough, by 8:00 pm, here they'd come...usually in groups of three or four - two boys and two girls. They'd be scared to death as they meandered between the tombstones with their own flashlights and after about five or six minutes of this we'd jump up behind a tombstone and scream. Talk about scaring them to death ? (no pun intended). It was always funny what they'd say when they first encountered us...I sure can't repeat it here, and the funny part was a lot of it came from the females (a total shock and "no-no" in those days).
In later years, we spent Halloween going out to the graveyards where "parkers" frequented such as the old Morehead Cemetery on old Highway 62. Most of the couples that came out there didn't come out to be scared, they had "other things" on their mind. Didn't matter to us! We'd sneak up beside their car dressed like a mummy or something and set off a Cherry Bomb. then we'd start screaming and beating on the side of their car. The girl inside would start screaming and the guy, not knowing who or how many of us there was didn't know what to do. It's amazing we didn't get shot but once the dust settled and everyone calmed down, most of them not only laughed about it...they'd help us set up the next poor suckers. This would go on until about 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., then we'd gather our eggs and meet at the Dairy Maid. We'd usually round up about six or eight cars and play "egg tag." This was a game where a car would leave every minute until the last one left. The idea was to head to an outer edge of town and in a few minutes come back in and look for the other cars without them seeing you first. Once a car was "egged," they were to return to the Dairy Maid. The last car (the one that didn't get "egged" or at least was the last one to get "egged") was declared the winner and had the "bragging rights" for the year, until next Halloween.
As I got a little older (physically that is) and graduated from high school, I joined the Central City Jaycees. For several years, we ran a "Haunted House" for the two weeks preceding Halloween. These were big productions back then and we spent a lot of time and money on costumes and props to make them realistic, including owning a real casket (we had three of them) and a life sized detailed skeleton (purchased at a surplus auction at a university in Indiana). We had a working guilotine that cut off a head that dropped into a bucket of blood. We had a "body" in one of the caskets. We had a 7' tall Frankenstein Monster that escaped from an electric chair (the chair actually had electrical "arcs" at the top of it) and we had a "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" room. That was my part.
At the time I owned a Homelite chainsaw that had a 30" chain bar. Of course, the chain was removed but under the effects of a strobe light, nobody knew that. I wore a realistic rubber mask, a pair of well worn overalls, flannel shirt, gloves and boots. Although our Haunted Houses had several locations over the years, our favorite was the upstairs of the old RC Cola building on Center Street. Ronnie Gish always played our butler/tourguide and he was the best. He looked and sounded just like "Lurch" on the Addams Family. When he brought a group (of about 10 or 12 people), they would line up shoulder to shoulder against the wall. Ronnie would give some kind of spill (it was nearly totally dark in the room) and when he introduced me, he would simultaneously flip on a strobe light and I (hiding off to the side in a large closet) would crank the saw (which was twice as loud in the interior room) and step into the room. We had a log about 8" thick and 3' long already sawed in half and
butted end to end with each half in a sawing rack. There were also several other log halves on the floor to give the effect that we had been doing some serious sawing all night. I'd take the saw and work the bar (without the chain) so it looked like it was sawing the log in half. We
even had a bowl of sawdust hidden behind the log where the exhaust from the saw would blow it into the air which (under the strobe light) looked like the saw was actually sawing the log so everyone thought the chain was on the saw. Soon the front half of the log would fall and bounce off the floor and I'd turn toward the frightened crowd and head toward them with the saw in front of me. Ronnie blocked one of the doorways and the other had shut behind them so they really didn't have anyplace to run. I'd take the saw and run it across the floor. I know that we homosapiens aren't "hinged" in the middle of our feet, but I swear that people could actually bend their feet "up" in the middle to keep me
from sawing off their toes. After a few seconds of sheer terror, we'd open the door and chase them into the next room. What amazed me was that in the seven years we operated these Haunted Houses, the saw never once failed to crank on the first pull. Later when I would put the chain back on it and use it for trimming trees or cutting firewood, it never cranked. I never knew why. I still get people who tell me today that our Haunted House was one of the scariest and most realistic they've ever been to, over thirty years after we closed it.
Halloweens are different now. Our Chamber of Commerce has a downtown Trick or Treat in both Central City and Greenville and it starts about three o'clock in the afternoon. It's attended by thousands of kids and their parents and truly is the safest way to trick or treat. Merchants (and some visitors) give candy from their storefronts and from the beds of pickup trucks. All the "Trick or Treaters" are home enjoying their candy by dark and it's unusual to have any kids knock on the door Halloween night.
I always got a kick out of my wife on Halloween night when we lived on Park Street. Our house was about 100' off the pavement and you had to climb about 10 steps to get to our door or "shimmy" up a 10' hill. Most of the kids (and especially those with parents) would be breathing pretty heavily by the time they got to the doorbell. The words "Trick or Treat" came with great effort. Pat would go to one of the stores a few days before Halloween and purchase several packages of "sugarless" chewing gum (which she also happened to chew). She'd then open the packages and empty them into a bowl on a table beside our front door. Here'd come the breathless "spooks" and they'd hold out their sacks and she'd deposit a single piece of gum in them. She never understood why most of them would "skip" our house as they made their rounds.
It didn't take long for word on the street to get out that the trip to our door just wasn't worth the reward. I "razzed" her about it until she finally started giving normal stuff like Milky Way bars and soon they returned. I guess anything chocolate was worth the trek.
Hope you have a Happy Halloween!
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