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Show HALLOWE'EN OF FORMER YEARS BY GAUTAMOZEN The spirit of Halloween is wafted by the gentle zephyr to our town again. So I asked an old timer how our lads and lassies of today compared with the young- people of long ago, and his answer was : "Our youngsters now, are so tough, that parents can hardly live with them. If you banish the rod you spoil the 3hild." And so it was up to me to defend them. We have temples of learning with capable teachers to instruct them to be wary of the pit-falls along the slippery path that leads to a higher sphere. Perhaps you are trying to forget some of your youthful escapades, I remember only too well the riotous urchins decorating our old white meeting house front, with a substance that was not pure gold. Really, I can't see much fun in staying out until daybreak just to make "All Saints Day" a hideous nightmare. Our regular bunch of racketeers would lay low until the darkest hour of Halloween night. Then the culprits would sneak from the jungle of stinkweeds that lined our Main Street, from the Big Hobble Creek Bridge to Fourth North. With the cunning of a coyote, the vandals would pretend to be playing "Run Sheep Run" just to throw the officers of the law off their guard, but the trouble makers were really hunting for bigger game. So when the coast was clear they hoisted an old buggy, minus the bed, up our venerable Cottonwood tree near the Third ward church Where Ira Sanford run the village blacksmith shop. I shall not divulge the names of these boys for obvious reasons. Suffice it to say that the riotous crew unhinged gates enough to put "a barricade at Fourth North and Main street from pole fence to pole fence. They espied a wagon load of wood 'standing near a high bank on Hobble Creek so the wild and wooley' kids toppled it into the water with the wheels pointing toward the Zodiac. To use an up-to-date phrase the terrors "stepped on the gas." If a two or four holer happened to be in the path of their march of conquest, it was tilted over on its back and so the jolly work went on. By two a. m. the dear boys of Buckskin days were almost out of Pep 88, but there was one more job to be done at all hazards. Some one said, "Oh, let's turn all th peigs loose in this slumbering berg." , So saying, the mischief makers, figuratively speaking, cinched up their loins and got busy. They pulled boards from pig stys. Now, anyone who has made a study of the swine's mind, knows that a hog can squeeze through a hole three sizes too small for his portly troso, but when one tries to get him back into the muck and slime he has to open the whole side of the pen. What these porkers did to the shocks of corn in the rear of most of the lots was simply unbelievable. It was a decided ' shock to the trusting farmers when morning came. Some of those who lost hogs, nearly sweat blood. One townsman had to kill his pig and load him on a dump cart to get him back to the old sty. It may have been glorious fun for the boys but (?) a bitter pill for the older boys. So to play safe I shall place my money on the girls and boys of 1935. Bless 'em. |