Halloween
Memories
Treat
or Treat, Robots and Candy Corn
By author Kathryn Meyer
Griffith
I
believe I’m lucky. I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Halloween was so
different back then. Simpler. More innocent. Exciting. A true holiday for
children. And I have memories I’ll cherish my whole life.
My
family was large. I had six siblings, three sisters and three brothers, and we
never had much money. My dad was a salesman and my mother, like a lot of women
during that time, didn’t work outside the home…she was busy enough raising
seven children. We were the poor family down the street with too many kids
living in the shabby two-story spooky looking house. Our neighbors shunned us or
felt sorry for us. But I didn’t care, I had my family to love me. I had Grandmother
Fehrt, my mother’s mother, to fill our bellies with food when the table was a
little too bare. I had my ambitions and dreams, science fiction and scary library
books to read and pictures to draw (I wanted to be an artist from the age of
nine). I frolicked in the empty fields riddled with deep gullies beside our
house with my brothers and sisters or ran the dark streets and woods playing
hide-and-go-seek. Sang to the moon on our rusty swing set in the backyard with
my brother, Jim. Or, on a black and white TV set, watched Zorro, the Twilight
Zone or The Lone Ranger on swelteringly hot nights in a house with no
air-conditioning. Sweet days and nights. Poignant memories now that many of my
family are gone.
Halloween
was my favorite holiday, next to Christmas. I remember one, when I was about
ten or so, vividly. It was cold and raining, but nothing stopped us four older
children (the rest were too young that year) from going out into the
neighborhood and collecting big brown bags of free candy. No, not when candy
was so rare for us. My parents could hardly keep enough food in the house, much
less buy us sweets. So Halloween meant a windfall of treats. Nothing kept us
home on that night. We’d quickly eat the bowls of chili Mom would insist we eat
as the sun went down. Another tradition. So we had some real food in our
stomachs before the glut of candy came.
My
mother, money being sparse as always, dressed us two girls up as gypsies, using
her old costume jewelry and tying bright scarfs around our heads and waists. My
younger brother Jon, wore an old sheet with cut out eye slots. A ghost. My
other brother, Jim, had outdone himself that year and, out of two cardboard
boxes and paint, had fashioned himself a robot. Wasn’t bad for an eight year
old, either. Made it hard for him to walk, though. He stumbled a lot.
That
night we traipsed through the wet woods, a short cut, to the rich subdivision
down the road that – oh, my – gave out those huge candy bars at each door, enormous
homemade popcorn balls or bags of candy corn, my favorite. My grandmother had
taught Jim and I a catchy song…G-i-n-g-a,
G-i-n-g-a, G-i-n-g-a…Ginga was his name. Never understood that song but I
think it was about a pet dog or something. Jim and I got so much good feedback,
so many treats for belting it out, though, that at Christmas we were performing
The Little Drummer Boy for anyone we
could corner and sing to. The beginning of our later singing folk duo (so big
in the 60’s) and then my short (my brother kept singing out as I began writing
my novels) singing career, no doubt.
We
had a great haul that night. Cold and rainy as it was. Frozen as our faces and
fingers became. Maybe got even more goodies because it was so inclement. We
went to all the houses, collected our booty, and ecstatic at our bulging bags,
at the end of the night, ran through the trees toward home. Trying to beat the
rain, which had become a deluge, worst of the night. With noisy thunder, and
spectacular lightning. It was sooo spooky. In the spirit of the night, we were
sure something bad was following us. We ran faster. Our paper bags getting
soaked as we cradled them against our shivering bodies.
Then,
clumsy in his robot disguise (he kept bumping into trees because he couldn’t
see) Jim fell over a tree limb and spilled his candy everywhere. As he cried, we
scurried around trying to salvage what we could. Didn’t do much good. Too dark.
The rain was too heavy. So the three of us promised to share our booty with him
and we led him home.
As
we were drying off and warming up, Mom and Dad smiled at our stories of singing
for our candy and all the strange ghouls and monsters we’d met on the way; laughed
over Jim’s mishap and gave us hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows to drink.
Then
there was a knock at the front door and when we looked, there was Grandma
Fehrt, dressed as a wicked witch, complete with tall black hat and long dress, cackling
at us. Trying to fool us. But we all knew it was her. She dressed up every year
and knocked at our door. Always a witch.
We
kids hugged her and laughed, then sat at the table counting out (and oohing and
aahing with glee) over our candy haul. We shared it with Jim, of course.
To
this day I remember that Halloween with a wistful smile. Such good times from
so long ago. I see my brothers and sisters young faces through the mists of
time, remember the thrill of singing with my brother for the first time and the
delight of the people giving us the candy in exchange for the song. I remember
my parents and the love in that drafty old house we scampered back to. I
remember my grandmother with her smiling witch eyes and painted face. Remember
going to bed with a stomach ache because I’d eaten too much candy. Heck, I
always did. And I remember those no longer with us. My father, my mother, one
of my brothers and all of my grandparents.
My
childhood, when I think of nights like that, is just a moment away. The dead
are with me again. Ah, I’d give anything to go back in time and be with all of
them once more. The way we were. Young and hopeful and with our lives ahead of
us. Enjoying each other’s company…and all that good candy.
Anything.
***************************************************************************
About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...
Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic
designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years
before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty
years ago now, and have had sixteen (nine romantic horror, two romantic SF
horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two murder
mysteries) previous novels and eight short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books,
The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.
I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James,
and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in
Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis,
Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too),
and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though
I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing
has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably
write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.
Novels and short stories from Kathryn
Meyer Griffith:
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984;
Damnation Books, 2012)
Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s
Revised Edition, 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s
Revised Edition, 2011)
Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s
Revised Edition 2011)
The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s
Revised Edition, 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery,
2003…soon to be an Amazon Kindle Direct ebook)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books
Murder Mystery, 2006…soon an Amazon Kindle Direct ebook)
The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008;
Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)
Don’t Look
Back, Agnes novella & bonus short
story: In This House (2008; ghostly
romantic short story out; Eternal Press 2012)
BEFORE THE END: A
Time of Demons
(Damnation Books 2010)
Damnation Books buy link: httphttp://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615721313
The Woman in Crimson (Damnation
Books 2010)
The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction)
Dinosaur Lake (from Amazon Kindle Direct 2012)
4 SPOOKY SHORT STORIES (Amazon Kindle
2012)
My Websites:
