Halloween Memories!

Some of my favorite memories of goblin day revolve around the Halloween Carnival at Crane Elementary School in Yuma, AZ. It was an amazing event. There were cake walks, white elephant sales, hay rides, games, tons of helium balloons and the joy of seeing your teachers in costume! 

One of my favorite games involved "fishing". You're given a pole with a string and clothespin attached. When you dropped your line over the wall, a person on the other side would attach a prize to the clothespin. Woohoo!! Sadly, I usually ended up with one of those Chinese finger cuff things!

There was so much to do! Another favorite activity would have been to collect all the balloons we could then inhale the helium out of them. Fun stuff, but apparently something we shouldn't have been doing. Who knew back then? Perhaps that's why I now have a severe case of the "wide-ends"...or "terminal cellulite". Maybe, just maybe it's the cause of the creepy "bat wing syndrome" under my arms? Oh the horrors...if I'd only known.

The huge back doors on the school gym where the carnival was held would be opened up and there would be a talent show. The most memorable act I recall was a band that played "Wild Thing". Imagine what that would sound like now!

As I bring this to an end, I have to mention the Wild Man. During one of the Halloween carnivals a teacher (I think) came running into the gym yelling "the wild man is loose". I don't recall who it was, but one of the adults had dressed in raggedy clothes, he had a chainlike leash around his neck and was running around acting like a crazed escapee from the psych ward! It was great! Kids were running and screaming...some genuinely frightened and some just having a good time. I doubt this would be allowed at the school sponsored "Fall Festivals" today.

The Zombies are at the "Worry Box"!!

When we were very young my Dad and his sister, my Aunt Velma, would take great pleasure in scaring the crap out of us either by story or by deed. One story in particular stands out because it not only involved zombies dragging themselves from the local graveyard to our Grandads' house, there was also mention of the "Worry Box".  It was actually a "weir box" which is used in the irrigation of farm land, but we always called it the Worry Box. The one pictured isn't exactly the same, but still creepy and serves it's purpose.

  At the time Aunt Velma told us this story we were at our Grandads' house which sat WAY out in the middle of several cotton fields. At one end of the dirt road in front of Grandads' house was an area we called "the woods". It was actually just a small stand of mosquite trees, but the adults made them sound just spooky enough to keep us out of them. At the other end of the same dirt road was an old crumbling adobe building surrounded by even older salt cedar trees. We called them "tamaracks", who knew?

Aunt Velma would begin her tale in the graveyard outside of Coolidge, Arizona. She described the zombies coming up out of the ground and slowly making their way toward the house.

She would describe their travels in such detail! They're passing this field, coming down this dirt road and finally..."they're by the WORRY BOX"!! You have to understand that the worry box was only a short distance from the house. We could just imagine the zombie horde shuffling down the dirt road getting ever closer!

One night my Dad and Aunt Velma decided to escalate the fright factor. Daddy had been sitting in the kitchen, we all knew this. While we're listening to the story Aunt Velma suddenly looks very scared and tells us she sees two red eyes looking in the window. We turn around and there they are!! Two horrible glowing red eyes looking right at us. Of course we think it's my Dad but by the time we get to the kitchen he's sitting innocently at the table. They had us running back and forth looking for the monster. Eventually it was revealed that Daddy was simply lighting up a couple of cigarettes and sticking them near the windows.