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Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet
Hallowe’en!! Yep, one week from today (Sunday) it’ll be Fright Night. Did you Trick ’r Treat when you were a kid? We sure did. In the 1950s, in a semi-rural community, going “shelling out” was a big deal. It wasn’t much past the first week of school in September when my older sister and I would start planning our costumes and mapping our route. Our costume planning was usually based on what we had in the old trunk my mom kept in the basement. The trunk was full of old clothing, old linens, discarded drapes and scraps of cloth from sewing projects. My sister and I would yak about our elaborate ideas to be something fantastical. As the weeks passed and we usually realized our big ideas and dreams were a little bit out of reach, we’d do a dozen revisions based on what we had in that old trunk. My father’s line of work gave us a vast supply of paper and pencils. Sis and I would wait until we’d cleared away the dinner dishes and then take over the kitchen table, rolling out the paper and rummaging through the kitchen junk drawer to gather up all of the pencils, crayons and paint we could find. We’d sit at the chrome kitchen table and just let the designing and sketching of our costumes begin.
One Hallowe’en we’d planned on being witches, but as far as the witch-hat making went, we were on a huge learning curve. We did manage to cobble a pointy hat or two together during one of our sessions, but we didn’t have a way to keep it all together. Mom didn’t buy sticky tape or glue for us kids to mess around with and our best engineering (mine) and design (my sister’s) skills were put to the test. Once during the millinery process we even made our own “glue” out of flour, water and salt. By the time the gloopy mess dried it had lost its holding power and flaked off. As the seams of the pointy hats gave way, an explosion of homemade paste sent a powdery mess onto the kitchen floor. Of course, if we made the mess, we had to clean it up. Salt, water and flour paste wasn’t the answer. We finally invented a method of tabs, slots and intricate folds to hold the hats together. And by gosh and by golly the witches’ hats were completed, except for the decorating. We’d seen the movie Fantasia, and decided, even though Mickey Mouse was a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, his hat was what we wanted. On the underside of our hats was a blueprint for someone’s new kitchen or solarium and on the other side we drew stars and moons and filled in the white spaces with charcoal pencil. That Hallowe’en we were Witches’ Apprentices. If I remember correctly, the rest of the costumes were just of Mom’s and Grandma’s old house dresses, which we smudged with shoe polish. Our straggly witches’ hair was just our straggly, unbraided hair with a bit of flour patted into it to make us look old. Our oldest sister helped with the makeup, which consisted of more flour, burnt corks, charcoal pencil and the end of a tube of lipstick. And then?
Well, and then it rained on that Hallowe’en Night. After we escorted the brats on a shelling-out, sucky-baby style, (our younger sister and brother) my sister and I headed out into the dark drizzle to collect our popcorn balls, homemade fudge, Rice Krispie squares, way too many apples, little boxes of Chiclets, peanuts and those hideous molasses Hallowe’en kisses. By the time she and I got home, we were soaked through, our beautiful/hideous witch hats had disintegrated, our “makeup” was dripping down our faces and our floured hair had turned into a gooey pancake batter. Mom declared us to be more frightening than when we’d left earlier. All in all, it had been a successful night. We scared the bejeebers out of the bully boys who lived around the corner. We peeked into the neighbours’ kitchen windows. We snuck through the neighbours’ backyards to get to the next street—trespassing was a big no-no, but on a rainy, dark night it was a daring-do. We teased the daylights out of the prissy-princess girlies from two streets over and threw the wormy apples at the STOP sign at the corner. Mom had hot cocoa and toast fingers with jam for us when we got home. While warming up we dumped our six-quart baskets and went through our spoils. Peanuts and Chiclets for Mom, along with the apples; icky Hallowe’en kisses for our younger brother (who, to this day, loves them) and everything else was ours to save, eat or trade at school during recess or on the bus.
Hallowe’en is still a magical time for kids. I used to get upset by older kids dropping by, or parents out with babies in strollers. But what-the-heck, life is tough enough without getting all judgemental. So, “Trick ’r Treat, smell my feet. Give me something good to eat!” Hold the icky Hallowe’en kisses.
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