My Life Before Ev

Halloween

            While I am on the subject of the neighborhood “gang”, there were a couple of events which happened worth noting. They both happened the same year. In those days, you did not go trick or treating on Halloween. Halloween was really a three evening happening. Two nights before Halloween was “corn night”. On that evening, after dark, you went around the neighborhood throwing hardened corn kernels at the windows. That, and those buttons where you put string through the holes, twisted it around, and then pulled on the string. That made the button whirl around, and when you put that against a window, it made a frightening noise. It was on corn night that we got chased by Mr. Kosnic, whom I mentioned earlier. He came running out of the house after we had thrown corn, or scared him with those buttons, and started to chase us. We ran up the street, and into the field at the dead end. We all knew about the wire stretched between two trees to keep the kids from walking across the grass, so we ran around it. But poor Mr. Kosnic didn’t know about the wire. The last we heard was a crashing sound, a loud grunt and some curses. He had tried to cut across the lawn between the trees, to head us off, and hit that wire. We often wondered what his wife thought when he came in all bent and bloodied. He never chased us again.

            Trick or treat night was the night before Halloween. The reason it was the night before was so you could find out who would treat you and who wouldn’t. If someone treated you, they were left alone. If they didn’t, they were tricked.

            A chiropractor named Buddenburg lived on Queen Avenue. He consistently refused to treat us, so on Halloween night we decided to trick him. All we did was pile a bunch of garbage on his front porch. In those days, trickery did not include vandalism. Boy, did we make him mad. Several days later a letter to the editor was published in the newspaper about the “gang” that existed in Park Place. He named all of us, and gave each of us the position he thought we occupied in the gang. I was flattered that he said I was the brains of the outfit. Even my father was pleased that he gave me that designation, considering the whole thing a farce. He knew we had not done anything destructive, and was on our side. He told all of us not to worry about it, that Mr. Buddenburg was just a blowhard, and couldn’t take a Halloween prank.  My father was sympathetic because he remembered turning over privies on Halloween, and felt what we had done was not as bad as that. But, we left Mr. Buddenburg alone after that, even though he never did treat us on trick or treat night.

Elm Grove Junior High School

            I was now twelve years old, and ready for Junior High School which consisted of seventh and eighth grades. Now they call it Middle School, because someone apparently thought calling it Junior High School hurt the children’s self esteem. I preferred it the way it was then, because you felt you were getting ready for High School. I was only twelve because I had skipped a grade. When I was in Grade School, there was a policy that if you did well, you could be skipped forward half a grade. I did that twice, so was a full grade ahead. It seemed fine at the time, but since I was a late bloomer, I was a year younger and a year smaller than most of the others in my class. I never got over feeling as if I were the kid in the class, which I was.