What says Halloween like pumpkins? And what’s more fun than kids in a pumpkin patch? Actually my young granddaughter here is just hefting the pumpkin to show me. We were at the Shaker village near me and this pumpkin had turned loose of its vine and was too big a temptation for my granddaughter to pass by. She did put it back where she found it so perhaps it still found its way into some pumpkin pies or muffins at the Shaker village restaurant.
What did you do on Halloween when you were a kid? How you answer that might show your age. Kids did go trick-or-treating when I was a kid, but I didn’t. Well, I did once with a school friend when I was maybe ten. I don’t remember how old I was, but I DID NOT like going up to the doors of people I didn’t know and saying trick-or-treat. It seemed too much like begging. Even the candy I got didn’t taste all that good and I loved sweets when I was a kid.
My dad hated Halloween. Back then, the farm boys played real tricks and didn’t worry about treats. One year they took my dad’s gate and wired it across the front door at the elementary school. Dad was not amused. Gates keep cows in the field. Missing gates don’t.
After I married and had kids, the church had parties with candy and games for the kids. Once when I was taking them and my nieces and nephew home from one of those parties, I drove up on triple high row of rocks across the road. They must have dismantled an old rock fence. A lot of work carrying all those rocks out in the road. It wasn’t much fun me having to move them either – in the dark on a lonely country road with six kids in the car. Spooky.
Here’s a bit of spooky writing by Ray Bradbury from his book, The Halloween Tree. He really invokes a great atmosphere here.
..Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and
still farther up at the great tomb yard top of the old house. For that’s
what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with
what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke
out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far
below in dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the
roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of
some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark.
even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up
out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting
out some few stars.”
Is that the kind of Halloween you want? Spooky? Or do you just enjoy standing at the door and watching the Tinkerbells and lions and camouflaged soldiers come to gather their suckers and candy bars?
I got a rock. ~ Charlie Brown
Hope you got better treats than Charlie. Thanks for reading.