1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: HALLOWEEN CARNIVAL

Other than basketball, there weren't a lot of events in Purdon, so the Halloween Carnival at the school gym was one of the premier events of the year.  Lots of the parents set up booths with things for the kids to do, and we looked forward to it for weeks beforehand.

The three of us, Susan, Jan, and I, dressed up in our costumes about five o'clock.  We planned to go trick or treating in town first and then walk to the gym which was  the equivalent of three blocks from our house. There weren't any blocks in Purdon, just gravel roads lined with sparsely spaced housees. Boy was going to go door to door with us, and we'd pick up Marie and Randy as we passed near their house. 

We started off next door at the Bittner's, who always gave good treats since they owned one of the two local grocery stores.  Mrs. Bittner was always smiling and had a kindness that seemed to float out from her and envelope kids in a cloud of goodwill. 

After that, we made our way to the parsonage, where our adored pastor and his beautiful wife lived.   She had made popcorn balls wrapped in cellophane, which she gingerly dropped into our plastic jack-o-lanterns, smiling at us with her perfect white teeth accented by her perfect red lips.

Next, we dropped by the home of the church music leader and pianist.  They gave us some good chocolate candies, wrapped individually. They smiled as they gave us the candies and told us to have a good night at the carnival.

It was getting near dusk by this time, and we had stopped and picked up Marie and Randy at their house.  They dumped some hard candies in everyone's containers since their mother had already gone to the gym to help with the preparations.  We decided we needed to head toward the gym. 

We passed a few houses.  We knew not to stop at the Sanborns, because they had a lot of kids, and buying candy was probably not something they'd think to do or have money for.  The rest of us wanted to keep going, not stop at any more houses, but Randy persuaded us to stop at just one more house. 

I didn't know the lady who lived there very well, though she occasionally was at the Bittner's store.  She came to the door after a long pause.  The house was just a simple square, built of the same white boards as most of the houses in town.  It had windows, but absolutely no other adornment.  No porch, no shutters.  Two tiny wooden steps led to the front door.  The wooden door was closed, not common in Purdon in October.

When the door opened, the pungent smell of cigarette smoke wafted across all of us, preceding Mrs. Ford to the door.  She lumbered forward, her large cotton dress hanging limply over her massive body, holding a box of Cheezits at her side.

 She was not unpleasant, though she didn't seem thrilled to see us, and she said gruffly, "Here, hold out your containers, I'll give you some Cheezits."  Then she dipped her hand into the box, grappled with something in the bottom of the box, and came up with a handful of tiny gold squares. 

Boy moved forward first and thrust his Halloween decorated paper sack forward.  Her thick fingers, brown with cigarette stains moved slowly toward the sack opening, and she dropped about ten of the little snacks directly into the sack, on top of the popcorn balls and candy.  Boy didn't seem to notice. 

Marie and I exchanged knowing looks, something we had gotten frighteningly adept at,  then resignedly held up our plastic jack-o-lanterns for the dispensation.  Neither of us looked as she dropped them in, but we said "thank you, ma'am" before we turned away. 

Randy was standing in  back of all of us, and he didn't appear to be planning to move forward.  He was the one who had wanted to stop to begin with.  Susan stood back, silently contemplating what to do.

"Thank you, Mrs. Ford, we're late for the carnival, so we have to go.  Thank you very much."  Susan said, saving only herself, Jan, and Randy. 

"Oh, okay, sure you three don't want any Cheezits?" she said, looking slightly perplexed.

"No ma'am.  We've got to get the younger ones down to the gym before dark.  Thanks very much."
She pulled it off.  Mrs. Ford didn't seem to have any clue about our true feelings.  Thank goodness. Marie and I let out deep sighs simultaneously.

Boy was crunching on a Cheezit as we turned to leave.  Once the tiny, dim, porch light was turned off,  Marie and I silently dumped our Cheezits in the shallow bar ditch beside the road.  Boy saw us, but said nothing, continuing to eat Cheezits as we walked the half mile to the gym.  Randy started to say something, and I figured it was mean, because Susan shot him a look that froze the words between his teeth. 

The gym was literally vibrating with activity.  Kids throwing darts at balloons, walking in circles to music to win cakes, playing games passing oranges to each other from neck to neck without touching the oranges with their hands, throwing basketballs into the hoops, tossing beanbags through a hole in a clown's face, fishing in the fishpond with the wooden fish, and parents managing and overseeing it all.  Most of the prizes were candy or small plastic toys or trinkets.  No one cared.  Everyone was just having fun.  Almost everyone who attended school was here, all the kids in grades one through twelve. 

 I could hardly wait to go into the spook house, which was set up behind the curtain on the stage.  Marie and I bobbed for apples, kneeling with four other kids around  a large tin washtub, like some of the families still used at home for their regular baths.  I hoped this was a new one, not one used by one of the families.

I couldn't get my mouth around an apple, but Marie popped up with one wedged on her teeth.  We started laughing, and it rolled onto the floor.  She picked it up and put it in her plastic container, then we started toward the back of the gym. 

A boy in a head to toe black costume with a skeleton on it waved bony hands directly at us. He held a plastic scythe that looked like it could cut off a head in one quick swipe. 

"Come in here, girls," he said.

We held hands and walked up the steps like two people condemned to the guillotine.  The door backstage opened and a disembodied hand reached out and pulled us forward.  Then it disappeared. 

A hag appeared, her white, stringy hair draped over her black shrouded shoulders.

"Hee,hee,hee", she cackled.  "Let's see what we have here.  Oh, you must try this, my pretties."  And she took our hands and moved them toward an unseen table of horrors.  "Put your hands in here and feel the eyeballs of the dead!" she squealed, forcing our hands into a bowl. 

"Ewww," Marie screamed.  I wanted to, but the scream froze in my throat.  My shoulders tensed, dreading the next thing we would be forced to touch.

"Stir these worms," our undesirable guide insisted.

We did.  The worms felt oddly like spaghetti, but it still made me squirm. 

"And finally," she said, "warm blood." 

She forced both of our hands into the warm liquid.  I gagged.  Marie laughed nervously. 

A mother dressed in a witch outfit took our hands and wiped them with a white towel, the blood soiling it badly.  She silently motioned us to her right onto the main part of the stage.  There we walked slowly, hand in hand, placing one foot in front of the other like we were just learning to walk.  Something flew between us, a bat perhaps?  We ducked, too late, then swung wildly at our hair to rid it of whatever had attached itself to our head. 

Moving on in the dark, we saw a light suddenly highlight a man hanging from the prop ropes.  At approximately the same time, another light came on showing a woman encased in a silver coffin, her white dress iridescent.  A single rose lay on her chest. 

By this time, we were more than  ready to get out of there.  Spooky sounds emanated from behind curtains at the back of the stage, and cold air blew on our necks at one point. 

We figured we were almost to the other side of the stage when we felt someone take hold of our shoulders.  Afraid to look behind us, we hunched our shoulders and tried to fold in upon ourselves.

A single finger in each of our backs started poking rhythmically until we at last  turned to see what it was.  A zombie stalked us, and when we turned to look at him, we screamed and tried to run away in the dark.  Marie fell first, and I tripped on her and fell directly on top of her back. 

"Get off me!" she said angrily.  I couldn't respond.  I was so frightened my thoughts were moving like wildly swerving cars on a runaway train.  I just started crawling as fast as I could toward what I perceived to be the exit.  My head bumped someone's legs, and they grunted. 

"Hey, what is this?  What are you doing?  You want out?"  It was a boy's voice.

"Let me out!" I screamed.  "Let me out!"

"Okay, okay.  Don't have a cow."  the voice responded.

The door to the brightly lit gym opened, and I groped for the step, then righted myself, only to hear a yelp  from the boy voice, "What th....." and turned to see Marie emerge from the dark, leap past me over the step and land in a heap on the gym floor.  The door slammed behind us. 

Marie looked sheepish.  "Sorry," she said.

"Okay.  That was scary, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, I think that zombie was your brother," she said somberly.

"He likes to scare people," I returned.  "I wouldn't be surprised."

Just then Jacey Leroy passsed by with several friends heading for the spook house.  Marie looked at me. 

"Why does she wear her hair like a boy, all slicked back in a ducktail?"  she asked.

As if on cue, Jacey took out a black comb and ran it through her brylcremed hair, placing the comb in the back pocket, her flannel shirt tucked loosely into the blue denim jeans.  Her boyish shoes made her walk even less feminine, clomp, clomp, clomp.

 Several boys accompanied her like acolytes, trying to do her bidding.  It seemed an odd group, but everyone liked her, even though they thought her behavior a little unusual.  Parents said her daddy had wanted a boy and made her dress like one.  It seemed to be common knowledge. 

"Let's go try to win a cake," I suggested, and we moved toward the circle of people trying to win Red Velvet, German Chocolate, Lemon, Coconut, and Strawberry cakes.  Most of the mothers were good cooks, and it was hard to get a bad cake.  I was pretty sure Mrs. Ford hadn't sent any baked goods for the carnival. 

We spotted Boy in the circle.  He already had a cake sitting next to his Halloween sack, but he was trying to win another one.  Mother was running the cakewalk, and her friend Daisy was helping her. 
They did it like musical chairs with music that started and stopped. 

We decided not to compete with Boy and moseyed over to the beanbag toss.  We both did well enough at that event to win several cheap plastic key rings  which we vowed to save till we were sixteen and old enough to drive a car.

Too soon, the lights blinked on and off, and it was time to finish.  Mothers and fathers started taking down the booths, and kids sat down on the bleachers and sifted their treasure.  Boy sat down beside me and started eating those Cheezits again.  He had two cakes, a chocolate pecan and a pound cake.  He was proud, you could tell, to take them to Evelyn, his mother. 

She wasn't at the carnival, but he'd ride home with us since he lived just behind us, and he could easily carry his cakes home from there.  Finally, Mother called for us, and we all piled into the car.

Susan, Boy and I sat in back, while Jan stood in the front seat between my parents, turned backwards, looking at us. 

" You get scared?" she asked me.

"Yeah, why?" I said, acting disinterested.

"I see you and Marie fall off the steps," she said.  "What scare you?"

"Just scary stuff," I said dismissively, "just scary stuff."

Susan whispered, "I think Elton was in there, dressed up.  He wouldn't talk to me though."

"Do you think Mrs. Ford will see the Cheezits in the ditch?" I worried, suddenly feeling unappreciative.

"What Cheezits in the ditch?" Boy quickly entered the conversation.

"Just some we dropped," Susan said.  "We wouldn't want to hurt her feelings."

"Those were good!" Boy piped up. 

Susan and I were immediately silent. 

"I want a Cheezit," Jan chirped.

"We don't have any left," Susan said quickly. 

Boy was digging in his sack.  "I think I have a few left," he mumbled.

"No, never mind," Susan told him.  "You like them so well.  We can buy some for Jan.  She doesn't need one right now.  Thanks anyway."

Jan looked quizzical, then pouty.  She couldn't understand, so it was no use to try to communicate with looks or telepathically.  She just wouldn't get it.

"Here," I offered her a piece of candy. "You can have this chocolate that we got from Mrs. Bittner."

She took it, turned around, and sat down in the front seat between Mother and Daddy. Candy wrapper sounds came from the front seat, and she didn't say anything else, so I could imagine the rich chocolate oozing out of the sides of her mouth.

At home, after the lights were out, I whispered quietly in the dark, loud enough for Susan to hear me.

"Do you think Boy will get sick from eating those Cheezits? Should we have told him not to eat them?"

"I probably should have stopped him," she whispered back, "but some things are hard to explain. He wouldn't have understood."

"Oh," I said aloud in the dark.

"Anyway," she continued quietly, "it's kind of like the spook house; perception is really worse than the reality."

I had no clue at all what she meant, so I just burrowed under the sheets and willed myself to go to sleep. Barring my worrying about Boy getting sick, it had been almost a perfect day.
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