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Halloween treat of today -- we never dreamed of anything like these scrumptious confections. |
All my Laona schoolmates at Pomfret No. 7 School in the 1950s eagerly awaited Halloween each year.
For a couple of weeks in advance, the kids in Ed Till's 6-7-8 classes (it was a 3-room country schoolhouse) would be busy decorating the large windows along one wall and making jack o' lanterns and black cats with arched backs out of orange and black construction paper to decorate the walls.
Mr. Till would let the most creative students design the themes for the windows, which were then outlined in India ink and then filled with richly colored tempera paints.
Working in this fashion allowed the more creative and older kids to take the lead while ensuring the younger kids also got to participate by filling in the outlined areas. We had to work fast because the tempera would dry quickly, especially if the outside temperature was cooler than the inside.
This style of doing things was a hallmark of everything done in that wonderful little school, making cooperation and finding an opportunity for all to contribute a lifelong habit.
(We also functioned the same way when our class was not at the table up front getting a lesson, by quietly helping the younger kids with their lessons or homework while we were "off".)
The day itself would be celebrated with a party in the classroom and a ritual -- and dramatic -- reading of Washington Irving's tale of the headless horseman in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". (How ironic that I should now live in a community with a neighborhood called Sleepy Hollow!)
Meanwhile, at home, many families made jack o'lanterns out of pumpkins and displayed them in a front window or on the porch.
Then on Halloween night, we all would go trick and treating in our costumes from the school party in small groups of six or seven.
Almost every household in the hamlet of Laona was well-stocked with treats -- though there were a couple of curmudgeonly residents.
(I remember Mrs. Bloor, who lived next door to us, in particular. Though she was otherwise a fine neighbor, she was not fond of groups of youngsters -- especially if they were boisterous. One year we smeared dog poop on her front door knob, rang the bell and ran and hid to watch her reaction. We certainly were not always the nicest kids and I would apologize to her in a heartbeat were she alive today.)
Each group of youngsters had its own more or less circular route so they would cover the most houses and return home to binge on their loot.
But there was one stop that everyone made and that was to soap the large windows of the Red & White grocery store at the intersection of (then) Route 60 and Webster Road.
Some of us would be bad and use a bar of paraffin instead of soap to scrawl our messages. I quickly repented of that after I started working as a stock boy at the store and was given the chore of cleaning the windows by scraping the paraffin off with a razor blade.
What kind of treats did we get?
Usually homeowners were waiting with a bowl or a paper sack of individually wrapped penny candies and each kid would grab a handful. (Often we would swap favorites with our pals before finally returning home.)
Some people would give out apples but they were generally not well-liked. After eating one or two they would often be thrown away.
There were only two warnings adults would give us: to be careful eating the apples because mean adults might put razors in them, and never to go to Mike Nasca's house.
Though we always heard rumors the next day of someone encountering a razor in an apple, the rumors never turned out to be true.
It amazes me that the same story is circulating today.
Mike Nasca was the brother of Frank Nasca, who with his wife Edith, owned the Red & White grocery store. He lived on a parcel near the DAV tracks and set between Route 60 and the Canadaway Creek.
The rap on Mike was that he was "queer" and molested young boys. Even as a youngster I thought this odd, as he was a virtual recluse, living in what was really a shack set way away from the highway and farming a few acres for subsistence mainly. I never knew anyone who ever went near his house and he did not shop at the store or bother with people in Laona, so he was a complete mystery to all of us kids. I think I only ever saw him once, working in the field between his house and the road. I think he was probably innocent of the things said about him. Rumors like this were definitely the dark side of village life.
There was, however, a well-respected farmer in the community who, it turns out, DID molest young boys as I learned in later life. And no one ever mentioned him, though it seems to have been an open secret. The difference between the two seems to be that Mike never married, while the farmer was married and a family man.
Things in Laona picked up after the Rev. Byron Esch and his family arrived at Emmanuel EUB Church and I remember in particular a Halloween costume party in the church basement to which he came as an old woman (a witch? No one was sure) and he totally stumped everyone until it was time to eat and he took his mask off.
We certainly had some grand times and no one ever had a thought that this was "the Devil's holiday" that some put out today. In fact, the first I ever heard that idea was from a friend in real estate who attended an Assemblies of God church, and this was in the 1990s.
In fact, Halloween is a contraction for the Eve of All Hallows Day, or All Saints Day, observed in Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches on November 1. In liturgical churches, the celebration of a holy day begins at Vespers on the evening before, hence Hallowe'en. So, it is hardly the "Devil's holiday" unless one thinks youngsters trick and treating are doing the Devil's work.
Even as times change and we have many new Hispanic residents in Plainfield, NJ, the tradition continues -- though with a slightly different twist. Here, Latino families trick and treat together in late afternoon, with the kids in costume, and visit merchants instead of going house to house. But the loot appears to be the same.
-- Dan Damon [ follow ]
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