Halloween Memories (1950s)

Halloween isn't what it used to be.

I'm old enough to remember when Halloween was a kids' event, not a major holiday requiring elaborate—and often tacky—decorations displayed weeks in advance. Usually, the only decoration back in the late 40s and early 50s was a carved pumpkin on the doorstep. It was lit the night of Halloween, not days before. There were no scarcrows on the porch, no cornshucks, no strings of orange Halloween lights on the shrubbery—who would have imagined such back then?—and no gravestones or skeletons in the front yard. Decorations didn't convey a sense of horror.

 Our parents remembered WWII and Korea, so they they'd had enough horror to last them for the rest of their lives. Gravestones—even simulated ones—in the yard—would have been disrespectful to those who had died. Folks remembered the Great Depression, so they certainly didn't approve of spending money on decorations or elaborate costumes.  

Our costumes were assembled from what we had at home—a lot of us were hobos—with maybe the addition of a 25-cent mask. Other popular costumes were witches, ghosts, and maybe a ballerina or two if girls were taking ballet lessons and wanted to get a bit of extra mileage out of the outfit. Since some of us already had cowboy or cowgirl outfits, those would do for  costumes, too. Often we carried noisemakers so folks could hear us coming.  I still have my tambourine, although it's showing its age a bit and doesn't jingle as loud as it used to:

A few days before Halloween, we drew and colored witches or black cats or pumpkins at school. Our teacher might have read us a spooky story, and we might have had a modest party right before dismissal,  but we didn't wear costumes to school. 

Trick-or-treating began as soon as it was dark—never earlier. We walked a few blocks in our neighborhood and were home within an hour or so. I don't remember parents ever going with their kids—though some might have watched from their porch. Mamas stayed home to hand out treats and to watch any younger kids, who peeked around their mamas' aprons and tried to make sense of all the strange creatures who hollered "Trick or Treat!"  Why did they look so strange? we wondered. Would they hurt me?

Halloween was a coming-of-age event. Trick-or-treating proved we were old enough to be out in the dark and old enough to find our way around. We started trick-or-treating when we were old enough to walk a couple of blocks, usually when we were about five or six and had mastered walking to a playmate's house or maybe to school. Before then, we stayed home. At least one older kid was usually with the beginners, and we stopped trick-or-treating when we were in the 8th grade—because trick-or-treating was for children. 

Many of the treats we got were homemade—cookies, Rice-Krispies bars, caramel popcorn balls, etc. A lot of ladies apparently fixed their specialties. Sometimes we got apples, candy corn, some individually wrapped pieces of store-bought candy, and sometimes even candy bars. 

Simpler times. . . .

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Geezer Test

I'm not sure of the original source or I'd post a link, but this "Geezer Test" has been floating around the Internet lately:

Could I be a geezer? Let's see what I remember—

1. Cap guns: I had several when I was a kid. I also had a cowgirl outfit, and I pretended my bike was my horse:

2. Home milk deliveries in glass bottles: Yep. I can't remember if we got our milk from Garst Brothers Dairy or from Clover Creamery, but I remember those bottles. Cream was at the top, so you had to shake the bottle to distribute the cream before you removed the bottle's cardboard cap. I have a bunch of old glass milk bottles—here are two. They make great vases.

3. TV test patterns early in the morning: Yep. As I recall, one of the two local stations didn't come on until later in the day, so the test pattern was on for a long time. I remember the Shot of the American flag flying when one of the stations went off the air at night, but I didn't usually stay up that late.

4. Curb finders for your car: I remember seeing them on some cars, but I don't think our car had them. We called them "curb feelers." You can still get them.

5. Stamp books and redemption centers: Mama always saved S&H green stamps from Mick-or-Mac. I got to paste the stamps in the book. She acquired a lot of stuff with the stamps we saved. I still have the glassware she bought with stamps.

6. Phone booths. I remember those well. I used to see them downtown and inside some buildings. When I was a student teacher at Hermitage High in Richmond, the school had a phone booth in the hall. One day at lunch, a teacher (I think it was the band director) was in it when some kids turned it around so the doors faced the wall. 

7. Aluminum ice cube trays with pull handles: I still have some of these somewhere.

8. Subway tokens: No subways in Roanoke, but I remember bus tokens. I used them when I was in the seventh grade had to ride a city bus downtown to Lee Junior High.

9. Crazy Eddies: Didn't have one in Roanoke. But we had Lee Hartman and Sons, which is still around after 75 years.

10. Earl Sheib's auto paint jobs: I used the Roanoke Earl Scheib to get my first horse trailer painted in the mid-80s. I remember the ads on TV, too. Heck, the person Earl Scheib might have died, but his business lives on—just not in Roanoke. 

11. Mobile rides that came around the neighborhood: What the heck are those? In Roanoke, we had a vegetable man whose truck came around once or twice a week. In summer, we also had Jerry the Popsicle Man.

12. Free Road Maps at Service Stations: My daddy ran the Sinclair Station (earlier it was Conoco) on Williamson Road, and he had a rack of free maps. Besides pumping gas, he also cleaned the windshield and checked the oil.

13. Seltzer bottles: Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody used to squirt people with one on TV. Never saw anyone I knew use a seltzer bottle, though.

14. Doctors who made house calls: I can remember my grandmother being visited by a doctor who made a house call.

15. Cigarette vending machines: They used to be all over the place. I think there was even one downstairs in Founders Hall at RPI in the little alcove where the candy machine and drink machines were. I can remember when businesses gave their clients ashtrays.

16. Flash cubes: Heck, I even remember flash bulbs. The cubes were a later improvement over the bulbs. My first camera (l.) didn't have a flash capability, but my second camera (center) did. I can remember having my picture taken with Mama's Kodak (r.) many times. It was way before home camera used a flash. 

17. Lincoln Logs: I had a set, but I was never able to build a cabin with them. I mainly used them to make corrals for my Roy Rogers Western Town.

18. Johnny on the pony, running bases, stoop ball: These must be games from big cities up north. I remember the pony rides on Williamson Road though. Three times around the ring for a quarter. 

19. F.W. Woolworth Company: It was in downtown Roanoke—in the same block as Kress's, McLellan's, Lerner's, People's Drug Store, the Mr. Peanut Store, and Pugh's Department Store. Miller and Rhodes came later.

20. Checkered Cabs: I remember Checker Cabs and also Yellow Cabs.

I can remember other stuff that I'm pretty sure qualifies me as a geezer:

21. I remember when everyone's mama sewed on a treadle sewing machine. many of my clothes were made on this one.

22. And everyone cut buttons off clothes that were worn-out and saved the buttons in canning jars.

23. I can remember when women wore aprons, like this one that Mama sewed on her sewing machine. Women wore house-dresses, too.

24. I can remember when mamas packed their kids a lunch, and the kids carried the lunch to school in a metal lunch box. I loved my Roy Rogers lunch box.

25. I can remember when you actually dialed phones. When I was a kid, phone numbers had only five numbers. Later a two-letter prefix was added, and then that was converted to a seven-digit number.

Yep, looks like I'm a geezer.

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Christmas Memories

Merry Christmas! 

This picture was taken either in 1949 or 1950—when I was four or five. I don't remember which. It sort of defines a picture perfect Christmas memory. But it's not exactly my memory of Christmas.

What I remember is that Mama wanted a Christmas picture of me, so she gathered up things I had gotten for a couple of Christmases and put them around the tree. That accounts for the two dolls—no kid I knew got more than one doll a year. I had almost outgrown my little green car by then, and I certainly wasn't allowed to pedal it on the floor.

The car was bought used (Mama once told me she paid a dollar for it), as was the wicker doll buggy that I'd had for some time. I still have the wicker buggy, as well as the two dolls and the doll high chair. I still have the sled and I think the little suitcase is somewhere in the attic. A cousin eventually inherited the metal doll house. I remember one wall in the doll house was put it upside down.

When the photographer (a relative of a neighbor) arrived in mid-afternoon, I had to put on my nightgown and pretend it was Christmas morning all over again. That's my memory.

But I do have a few real Christmas memories—mostly smells. Like the smell of the cedar Christmas trees we had when I was a kid. Our trees weren't fancy, but they made the house smell great. And all our greenery was real—like the running cedar that cascades down the mantle.

When I was older—10? teens?—we had bayberry candles that made the house smell good, too.

Also at Christmas Mama always baked a coconut cake and a raisin-nut cake—both labor intensive but heavenly smelling. I remember she always bought a coconut and grated it herself. I think she used the coconut milk in the cake, too. I remember she cracked the nuts for the raisin-nut cake. Sometimes she made a fruitcake, too.

Speaking of fruitcakes, my favorite short story is Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory," in which the young narrator and his elderly relative Miss Sook bake fruitcakes for people they know and for people they don't know—like the Roosevelts. "A Christmas Memory" was in one of the literature books I used when I taught junior high. I always read it to my classes in December. A teacher friend at Stonewall Jackson Junior High, Linda Sampson, gave me a slip-cased copy as a Christmas present.

If you haven't read it, I recommend you get a copy. You can also read it online (if you don't mind intrusive ads) here. Or you can watch a portion of it on this video and hear Capote himself as the narrator (other parts of the story are also on YouTube):

My best Christmas present memories involve dogs. Twice I've received 6-week-old puppies for Christmas. I bought Maggie as a present for myself in 2005, and drove to Bedford to get her.  My husband bought me a Basset Hound in the early 80s. We drove from Roanoke to Fancy Gap one night to pick her out and back again to pick her up a few days before Christmas. She was orange and white—the same color as the terrier Queenie in "A Christmas Memory." 

Naturally, I named her Queenie.

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