By Rosalyn Queen
As we get ready to bid the month of October farewell, we also get ready to observe Halloween. As I walk through the stores and see all the costumes and how costly they are, my thoughts go back about 75 years to my first Halloween. Any thoughts I have of Halloween go back to my days at East View Grade. school.
About the first of October we would start planning our costumes. We would search through our parents’ closets to come up with a special outfit. My memory goes back to several costumes. Once I wore one of my moms dresses and made myself into an old woman, then I did the same with an outfit from my dads closet. Then I remember planning on wearing a bathing suit with a big hat carrying a picnic basket with an umbrella. It got real cold the night before and my mom made me wear a coat and threw a white sheet over me and I went as a ghost. Once I wore all black and was a witch. One of my favorite costumes was a big cardboard box made as a television and I remember winning a. prize. Then my sister and I both wore my dad’s Marine uniform.
Halloween in our lives consisted of getting dressed for school and then we had a parade of all six grades together. We left the school, paraded down the hill to Guzzis market and then up the other hill and back to the school. There would be several people lined up to watch the parade. There were judges who chose the prettiest, ugliest costumes and they were given some type of prize. Then our home room mothers would have a party for us which generally consisted of cupcakes, juice and candy.
Our observance ended withTrick or Treating in our neighborhood. Most of our treats were candy, but a lot of the times we were given apples that our neighbors had collected from their own yards. We might get a candied apple or a little bag of popcorn. As I got older I remember going Trick or Treating in other neighborhoods where they always gave candy bar treats. Some times we were even given a nickel. As the evening ended we hurried home to get out of our costumes and go through our bag of goodies, eating till we were almost sick and putting back some for tomorrow.
There were times the week before Halloween that we carved out pumpkins and then maybe we would bob for apples in a tub of water. There is one other thing that I vaguely remember and that is noise makers. I remember we had them for the parade and most often they were a metal pie pan and a spoon.
Times sure have changed. If we had decorations it was a pumpkin and cornstalks. Now you can spend a fortune decorating your home.
Now that Halloween is over we get ready for Thanksgiving. It is not commercialized as much as Halloween but I put more emphasis on family and thankfulness.
I hope you enjoyed the beautiful leaves. This is the first season in almost twenty years that I did not get a mushroom. I guess this a lesson that we are not in charge even of the rain to make the mushrooms come up.
Please take care and remember to winterize yourself. for the upcoming cold weather. Be sure to get your shots.
Enjoy each day, be careful and until next week “Now You Have Heard It Through The Grapevine.”