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Blogging By the Sea
Saturday, October 23 2021

Welcome to our Round Robin Blog Hop for October where we've been asked to share a childhood Halloween memory or tell about our scariest Halloween.

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To be honest, I don't recall ever having a super scary Halloween. Even when I visited haunted houses that were meant to be scary, I knew they weren't real. So I thought I'd share some of my fun or funny Halloween memories. I’m going to date myself, I know, but Halloween when I was a kid was very different than it is today and I think half the time us kids or even our parents might have ended up being handcuffed and tucked into the back of a police cruiser had we gotten up to the same high-jinks in this century.

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Picture Aunt Bea on Mayberry RFD and you have a good idea what my maternal grandmother was like. A kindly lady who always had fresh baked cookies to share, a victory garden out back and got down on the floor to play with us whenever we visited. Now picture that same woman dressed in a clown costume, toting a rifle and shooting out the streetlights. I didn’t actually see this happen, but I heard the story from several unimpeachable sources and my grandmother didn’t deny it when asked.

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Then there was my dad, who admittedly had always been something of a cut-up, together with a friend and removed the bench seat from another neighbor’s car, braced it across poor man’s doorway and then stuck a pin in his doorbell. Mr. Green knew immediately who’d done it and called them out of their hiding places by name. Then all three got a good laugh and ended up sitting on the Mr. Green’s porch sharing a bottle of whiskey.

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As for my own twisted ideas of Halloween fun - one year, long after the candy had been collected and the porch lights turned off, I and three of my friends donned our darkest clothes and headed for the house on the corner with a glow-in-the-dark frisbee. The houses on both sides of the street had a privet hedge bordering their lawns and the plan was to wait until a car approached and sail the frisbee across the hood of their car. It was harder to time the hurl than we had thought and it took quite a few tries before the first startled motorist thought he was seeing a real UFO while we giggled helplessly behind the hedge.

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Another year, we “borrowed” the dummy decorating someone’s front porch. (Mind you, this was well after dark, unlike the photo to the left.) I dug up a length of rope from my father’s garage and we tied it around the dummy’s neck, then threw the other end over the heavy cable connecting two telephone poles on that same corner. We adjusted the height so the dummy’s feet just brushed the ground, then pulled our stuffed man back into a gap in the hedge. And waited. Finally, a car approached with his blinker on and we all held our breaths and hushed. Just as he made the turn, we shoved our ‘victim’ into his path. It made a lovely thunk as it connected with the front of the poor man’s car. The driver screeched to a halt and leapt from his car but before he could get around to the front and see what he’d hit, we hastily hauled that dummy up to the overhead cable and out of sight. Looking back as an adult and a driver, I am appalled and I’m sure my parents would have been as well, had they known. The distressed driver couldn’t find a body. He went back to his car and dug around for a flashlight, then looked under his car. Still no body. I’m not sure how we managed to stifle the laughter bubbling up in our throats as he stood there scratching his head, but never once looked up. Eventually he got back in his car and drove away, and we convulsed in mirth. Our trick for the night achieved, we went home to start the annual task of sorting and trading our haul of candy while guzzling down the apple cider my mom served up.

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Another amusing Halloween story from my past was the year my younger brother dressed up like a fisherman and my mother bought a real fish from the market to hang on the make-shift rod my dad fashioned. That same good-natured neighbor who had his door blocked with a car seat a year earlier greeted Scotty warmly and began shoving candy corn into the fish’s mouth. None of us were ever sure what distressed my brother more – the desecration of his “real” fish or the fact the candy corn wasn’t going to be edible. Poor Mr. Green tried to fix his mistake by offering Scotty another package of candy corn for his bulging pillow case, but Scotty just fled home in tears to tell his tale of woe to my mom. I was too busy laughing to feel sad for either Mr. Green or my brother.

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I’m not sure how you celebrate the day, now or as a kid, but check out these authors and hear some more spooky, funny or outright horror stories appropriate for the holiday.    

    

Victoria Chatham 

Marci Baun 

Connie Vines 

Dr. Bob Rich 

Rhobin L Courtright 

Anne Stenhouse 

Posted by: Skye Taylor AT 12:02 am   |  Permalink   |  5 Comments  |  Email
Comments:
Skye, one of the things I admire is the apt pictures you dig up from somewhere. I didn't know you were such a naughty child! No wonder you became an author.
Posted by Bob Rich on 10/23/2021 - 05:40 AM
My blog gives a somewhat similar trick, but I wonder how long the driver worried about a dead body and watched the local news for any report! Funny stories and I agree with Bob about the illustrations.
Posted by Robin Courtright on 10/23/2021 - 10:17 AM
You got up to a lot of hijinks. The most we did on Halloween was doorbell ditch. Well, okay, then, when we got older, we would lie in wait for the kids who came out to trick or treat and scare the tweens/teens. The parents, and most of the kids, loved it. LOL
Posted by Marci Baun on 10/23/2021 - 01:45 PM
Too funny! I think the tale of your clown-suited, gun-toting granny is the winner, with your dummy body second. I doubt kids would be able to get away with those kinds of high jinks today without being considered politically incorrect, insensitive, or whatever. They'd probably be hauled away somewhere for counseling!
Posted by Victoria Chatham on 10/23/2021 - 04:02 PM
Oh my! One of the things I always come away with from the funeral of a prim elderly lady is a story or two like yours above. We were all young once. Great post, Skye. Loved it. anne
Posted by anne stenhouse on 10/24/2021 - 03:16 AM

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    Skye Taylor
    St Augustine, Florida
    skye@skye-writer.com

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