It's Halloween and still a bit shy of nine P.M. but the treats are long gone, what with goblins in all sizes having swarmed across the premises since good dark fell.
The UNICEF team was one of the first to call. They picked up the marbles and moved on. Shortly afterward the Eskrigge boys (Richard, Robert and Charles) tarried briefly, accompanied by Mary Elizabeth ("Phronia") Lane and her kid-brother Todd. She was very sweetly dressed out as a Pilgrim lass, and her approach was noteworthy as well as her costume, in that she came bringing gifts Instead of grabbing for them.
Presently a deluge of pint-sized goblins, devils and skeletons, including the England and Montgomery children, poured in to further deplete the candy bowl and what Dove had regarded as an ample supply of vanilla wafers. Then three grown boys, operating from a pick-up truck, demanded tribute and, in so doing, put a further strain upon the economy and left us wondering if they weren't stocking up for a concession stand somewhere on the morrow.
Sometime during the evening, there was a visitation by an all-girl group, "the frying-size" as Grandfather used to call them, and, while there wasn't a witch in this car-load, they were bewitching and how. Lafon Walcott appeared to the shepherdess. The lark, rather than the loot, was definitely what these had in mind, for they lifted very little from the bowl.
Not that there was all that left, and a present raid by four tiny mites cleaned out the deal, wherefore we doused the lights and moved into the rear of the house to call it a day. Not for long, however, what with a knocking at the kitchen door. Eloise Kretchmar and Georgia Davis, in nylon-stocking masks and unrecognizable save for the latter's voice, were having a little fun with us natives in Wilzin Park, and it was their routine which rang down the curtain on Halloween for I960.
Halloween in the year 1952 is the only one that caught us unprepared for same, so far as spooks et cetera were concerned. We had just moved onto Wetherbee Street, either that afternoon or the day before. The house was brand-new, and the cupboard as yet unstocked for operation sweet-tooth.
So when the kids came by, had to settle for tricks instead treats. We all prowled the yard to find bits of block and boards left behind by the building crew, and built a fire in the living-room fireplace, with the goblins sitting in a semi-circle before the hearth. We picked the banjo, there was group-singing, and Dove fixed jelly-bread by way of more solid hospitality.
We didn't realize it at the but that was probably the most successful Halloween since we managed to unhinge Mr. Kretchmar's front gate on South Broadway in 1908.
A year or two ago Mrs. McClellan was at the house and told us that her son Bobby (only she called him Robert) had been one of the children that night In 1952, still talked about what a good time he had had in Mr. and Crump's home. Bobby became a football star at G.H.S. and afterward attended Sunflower Junior College at Moorhead. Some of the other children that evening in 1952 were Linda Powers, Dixie, Rebecca and Martin Myers, and Frank Caperton.
Halloween in 1969 is a stand-out too. Lyman and Kathryn Reed sat with us a while and, during breaks from the trick or treaters, we listened to the Ole Miss-L.S.U. game and Billy Cannon's eighty-nine-yard run which won it. Judy Rushing and her girlfriend picked up the last two candy bars on the table and, in the little front bed room, the sands were running out for "Sunbeam" (our pet name for Mother) who left us the very next day.
B.C.
