I know it is more than two months until Halloween, but the stores are already stocked and the visiting we did yesterday at lunch made me think of the Halloweens when I was a child. Excluding those that occurred when I lived in California with grandparents (don't remember those at all) there were maybe six in all. None after the beginning of high school. The only thing that was done for Halloween back then was carving pumpkins and Trick-or-Treating. I only remember being a fortune teller, year after year, carrying a white balloon for a magic ball. But I was dressed in satin and bangles and lots of cheap jewelry that I collected over the years. My gypsy-ness came out and I gloried in the slinky, sparkly, flashy depiction of what I thought a fortune teller would wear - gleaned from the movies, of course. We did have gypsies in Portland and they lived in downtown buildings with strings of beads for their doors and they sat out on chairs on the sidewalk. The children were all over the place - how I envied the clothes and the freedom. I never thought of the squalor or the undependable lives they lived.
So, on Halloween, when in Portland it was inevitably raining so we all carried umbrellas, we ventured forth to harvest all the candy we could. We never worried about being poisoned or finding razor blades or needles in our candy. How innocent we were. The first stop was always Blairs Candies located in a building behind the Blair's house on the next corner. Mr. Blair was always generous with his chocolates, the neighborhood kids were great customers, including (or perhaps especially) me. I may have talked before about wanting to work as a chocolate dipper when I was old enough, but when I was old enough I took the dipping test and failed miserably. My hands are too hot and I can't dip and let go before my fingerprints are in the chocolate coating. I cried on my pillow, I was so disappointed. All my life I have had to dip the centers using a skewer and never touching them with my hands. Poor me! After visiting Blairs we made our way through the neighborhood, up one block, cross the street and return on the other side, pass our house to the next corner, cross the street and return on the other side. And then it was time to go check out our loot. I gave all the licorice to my sister who loved it, I don't remember what she gave me back. People were very generous and we had huge bowls of candy and some coins to put in our piggy banks. And that was Halloween. The costume and jewelry went back in the storage closet and the candy eventually disappeared down our gullets. It was a simple, one evening holiday in the late 40s and early 50s.
"Jack" Del Thomas - the Surfside Quilters Guild monthly mini for Sep 2013
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