Halloween

The four young men were exhausted. "Tired but happy" as the saying goes. They had been working non- stop for almost five hours and now they were sitting in the grass along the roadside laughing, smoking and drinking from their 12 bottle case of beer. When they finished the case, they swore each other to secrecy, crowded into the cab of the big gravel truck and headed for home. What they had done that night caused years of trouble and hard feelings among the farmers for several miles around.

Earlier the same night, the young children of potato mountain had dressed up, mostly as hobos, or just with a Lone Ranger mask for the boys, while the girls usually tried to be a princess or some other female figure, in one of their mother's old dresses and some rouge and lipstick. They met up in groups of 5 or 6 and started out (without any parents present) on their rounds of the 10 to 12 houses they visited. It was Halloween in 1945 and all told there may have been 20 children.

The farm houses were at least 1/4 mile or more apart and it was total darkness. The children sometimes heard some movement or noise in the bushes alongside the road and let me tell you they were very glad to reach the next house safely. When they arrived at a house with the lights on they banged on the door and yelled "trick or treat" as loud as they could. When the door opened, they were not just handed candy, they had to go into the house. Some people just asked what or who they were supposed to be and guess who the child was, other people insisted they perform. Performing meant reciting a poem or singing a song. Most times, the kids would all sing a school song together.

There was no store-bought candy. There was apples (least prefered) cookies, chocolate brownies and if you were lucky, home made taffy. Some of the farm wives went to a great deal of work wrapping the goodies in little packages of wax paper and tying the package with store cord or even ribbon. Trouble with this was you didn't know whether you had scored big or not until you got home and opened the loot.

When there were no lights on is when the trick part came in. Some children carried pieces of bar soap and would soap the windows, others had an egg to toss against the door. It did not pay to try to avoid giving out goodies on Halloween.

On the way home, as each child went into their house, the little gang got smaller and scarier. If you were the last one left, you had to walk alone in the dark. Chills ran up your back at each sound you heard. There were always more and louder sounds when you were alone and you were afraid to start running in case you could not run all the way home and the ghost or goblin would get you for sure. (maybe some of these spooks were actually teenagers who were too big to go tricking??)

On the day after this particular Halloween, the farmers with steel gates found these had turned into old wooden ones! These gates to their fields were 12' -16'long to accomodate machinery and hay wagons and also to keep the livestock in. They were quite expensive to replace and it was a sign of prosperity to have nice steel gates. Other farmers were pleasantly surprised that they had magically acquired new steel gates, replacing their old and in many cases dilapitated wooden ones! This transformation continued up the concession road from one end to the other(about 4 miles). As word spread, it became apparent the problem was not just on our concession, but continued on for four more concessions! What had happened was the Halloween spooks had picked up a load of nice steel gates in the big gravel truck up one road, drove three or four concessions away and traded them for wooden ones and then returned the wooden gate to where the steel had been.

Farmers who had been friends for years, and even relatives, began fighting over their gates, but of course it was not possible to positively identify a gate. It is not known for sure if they all ever got over this incident and it would not surprise me if some descendants of the old farmers are still holding grudges with other descendants. Unaffected farmers thought it was a great joke and the refered to the incident as "the Halloween the gate snobs got their comeuppance."

Blood would probably have been spilled at the time if it had been found out who was behind the prank. Many people had their suspicions about who the culprits were. I'll never tell.

NEXT- Pond sailing.

"You've got to do your own
growing, no matter how tall
your grandfather was."

Irish saying