"Halloween"

Copyright 2013, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

This blog post  is part of my participation in a weekly writing meme called, "The Book of Me, Written By You"  You too can be part of this experiment/experience, there is information at this Facebook page.

I may or may not publicly share what I write each week. This week I share.

(You may note that I have skipped several weeks of the meme, I will catch up with those in the future, but, this weeks challenge is time sensitive, so, here we go.)

This week’s (Week 9) prompt is Halloween

Have you ever participated in a Halloween event?
When was it?
Where was it?
What did you dress as?
Trick or treat?

Oh, do we participate in Halloween??  Oh, yes, we do.  Every year as far back as I can remember Halloween, we participated.

Must say, tho, I don't remember this, the earliest photo in my possession, of me in a costume, along with my brother.  This was in the early 1950's.  Two clowns.  Most likely the costumes were sewn by our mother.

This photo was in the late 1950's, my mother's Metropolitan behind us.  Brother was a witch, with broom and all.  I believe I was a gypsy?  These were the days of the paper masks, with the elastic stretchy band to hold them on.  They covered your eyes and nose, and I remember they were not always easy to breath through.

I remember going trick or treating with large bags, ok, pillow cases.  We lived in a rural area, we had to run, hard and fast, in order to cover the territory and come home with lots of carbs, err, candy.  This was in the day of the huge candy bars.  We always knew which houses gave away the "good" stuff, and we did tend to go to those first.

(Yea, I research stuff when I write posts, go ahead, click. How large were candy bars in the 1950?  Be sure to look at the images too!)

Then, came high school and college and marriage and babies and Man's service to our country.  We ended up in Morocco for 16 months.  And, for some reason, we decided to throw a Halloween party.  I was Dorothy.  (Oh to be that tiny again, sigh!)

And, Man was my Lion. (Another couple, good friends of ours came as the Tin Man and the Scarecrow.)

That was some party, let me tell you.

When we returned stateside, we had another baby.   There were many costumes over the years, most gathered from whatever we could around the house.  There was the year that the eldest son wore a wig, ya, one I had that was really horrible, but, he made kinda a pretty little girl (but do NOT tell him I said that!  LOL)

We had pumpkins to decorate each year.  Seems I have not scanned many of those photos.  I really must see if I can find the photo from the first year we painted pumpkins instead of carving them.  That year we each had a pumpkin, even Man.  I remember hats and other additions to the painted faces.  They were so much fun!  Painting pumpkins became a favorite way to decorate, no digging out pumpkin guts and seeds, they lasted for 6 weeks if painted correctly and the different shapes gave over to some great creative faces.  Burt and Ernie of the Muppets became favorites of mine, they were small and so distinctive, and the younger kids love them.

Some years I would still dress up, as here in 1981, the Djellaba was purchased in Morocco.  Children seemed to be rather fascinated by it, as costumes go.

When the grandtwins came along we started trick or treating again.  It became a yearly tradition, grandparents, sometimes two sets of grandparents, parents, the twins, the uncles and a long list of other relatives and friends.  The young parents seem to love dressing up too.  They are very creative with their costumes and makeup, face painting is very popular.  We have lots of fun photos.

And, yes, I have even dressed my pets.  SIGH.  Here are on the left, Abby, and on the right, Tilly.  They were clowns too, little hats with pompoms and leis.  They did not like the hats.

Happy Halloween!  May your costumes be varied, interesting and remembered.

.