We had a neighbor lady, Miss Collins,
who never married and lived alone accept for a small dog that she had...a little ankle biter and the breed of the dog now escapes my memory. It was a barker I remember! She was an avid gardener and her yard was the best yard in the neighborhood to hide in for Hide and Seek but her dog often gave you away or she did did when she yelled at you to get out of the yard because you were making her dog bark.....but all that is for a different blog.
Miss Collins seemed to like the
neighborhood children and we liked her too. We often visited her on
weekends...several Saturdays afternoons before Halloween, she would
invite all the neighborhood kids over and we would make our own
Halloween treats. Not all of the kids came but each year six or
eight of us did! The first Saturday we would arrive promptly. She
would have the taffy all made and it would be ready to pull. “Go
wash your hands! “ she would remind us. So we all lined up at the
kitchen sink and while standing on a stool we washed our hands. She divided the taffy into child
size balls and gave each of us one. “Be Careful, it's still warm
but we need to start pulling it." she would tell us. It was a bit like playing with
Stretch Armstrong (who came along many years later). We pulled and
pulled until the taffy cooled and changed from a rather transparent
color to a cloudy one...As you pulled it, it became harder and harder
to pull as it cooled. Miss Collins knew when the taffy was perfect
and with one last pull we would hand over our strings of taffy and
she would get to work cutting the taffy into bite size pieces on a
butcher block! Sometimes taffy would shoot across the room as she cut
it. The kids would burst into laughter as we scrambled to find the
piece. She had wax paper cut into squares so we could wrap the
taffy pieces as she cut them. Looking back on it she had a fairly
small kitchen for all the neighborhood kids to pack into... For never
having children of her own she sure was patience with us all! She
would put the wrapped taffy in a bowl. We could hardly wait til the
next Saturday when we would come to see her again!
The next Saturday, she would have a
couple of roasting pans over flowing with pop corn and a large pot of
taffy like candy cooking on the stove. After we arrived and washed
our hands, she instructed us to get some butter from the butter dish
and rubbed it all over our hands. And as kids always do, we teasing
each other with our greasy hands! Next she would pour the hot candy
liquid over the pop corn filled roasters. She stirred it up a bit trying
to coat all the pop corn and let the candy cool some with six or
eight kids with greasy hands who can't wait to dig into the pop corn mixture. When it was cool enough we all gathered around her table
grabbing a hand full of pop corn at a time and making balls out of
them. As is always tempting with kids, you just wanted to throw that
pop corn ball when you got done shaping it but we would wrap each
ball in wax paper instead. We would make enough pop corn balls for
all the kids in the neighborhood. She allows us to pick our favorite
and she marked them so that we were sure to get the right one.
On the final Saturday before Halloween,
Miss Collins would have us come over again. This time we were to
help her stuff the Halloween bags that she would hand out to the
neighborhood kids on Halloween. When we arrived, she would have lunch
size bags open on her kitchen table all ready for us to stuff. Each
bag got a pop corn ball, taffy, chewing gum, a sucker and a plastic
Halloween spider ring or wax vampire teeth or a similar Halloween
themed item. The kids who participated wrote their name on the bag
that they wanted and then we wrote names on the rest of the bags for
each of the kids in the neighborhood!
Now we patiently or not so patiently
waited for Halloween. There was still lots to do. If we had not
gotten our new mask, it was time to do that. We did not get new
costumes each year. We did get a new plastic mask and found clothes
that we had in our dresser draw which completed the costume. A black
cat mask with black pants and a black turtle neck sweater was my
favorite costume when I was six or seven. I was a clown several times
too. Mom had a tendency to steer us away from scary costumes and toward the happy fun ones.
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| Matt and Mark - Halloween 1966 |
And then there were the pumpkins. On
the Sunday afternoon before Halloween, my Dad would pile all the kids
in the station wagon and take us to a local farmer or fruit stand
that had pumpkins. We would pick out the biggest one we could
carry!!! That was the key...we had to be able to carry it.
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| Mark trying valiantly to carry his own pumpkin and Sharon helping Matt - 1966 |
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| Keeping a close eye on their pumpkins while waiting to pay for them - 1966 |
After we selected and purchased our
pumpkins, we took them home to carve them. Dad supervised the
carving and gave us ideas when we had none. He was extremely
creative!
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| Jan, Sue, Matt, Mark and Sharon all carving pumpkins on newspapers on the Family room floor - 1966 |
We all had Halloween parties at school
during elementary school so we took our costume to school and got to
put it on for a Halloween parade and a party. It was not a very
productive day at school since every kid wanted to get home to go
trick-or-treating.
When we arrive home on the school bus and all we could
think about was trick-or-treating. We only went in our neighborhood
of about twenty houses and only to the houses who had the porch light
on (and of course they all did). There were no street lights but we
had to patiently wait for it to get dark before we could head out.
And everyone had to eat a good dinner or you could not eat your
candy! While we waited we decorated a brown grocery bag to use for
collecting our candy. You made sure you put your name on it so
everyone knew it was your bag of candy!
Eventually, Mom could not take anymore
“Can we go now? Can we go now?” and she would send us on our
way. We ran across the lawns from house to house yelling
“Trick-or-Treat!!!!” impatiently waiting as Theresa Randall or
Dee Hughes or Dee Jacobsen to give candy to each kid standing at
their door! The amazing thing was that they knew each child so if
you pushed to the front of the line you would be in trouble! Miss Collins was usually one of our last stops since we knew what we would get from her! and then it was on up the hill to Ludkey's house.
After an hour or so we would go home
and dump our candy on the living room floor to see what we had. We
often tried to barter with each other...for our favorite
candy....I'll trade you a black jack for a bit of honey or sucker for
a tootsie roll! I remember the year that Sweet Tarts came out because we all wanted them. It was often a losing battle because we all like
the same candy and no one was about to give up their favorite candy.
Almost no one handed out chocolate when I was a kid.
So I hope this blog gets you thinking
about your fondest Halloween Memories. Happy Halloween!
Love, Jan
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