Oct 31
Halloween in the 1940s in Central Pennsylvania
Trick or Treating was quite different in the 1940s vs. what we see here on the West Coast today. And am I relieved. As a small boy growing up in the coal region of Pennsylvania, Halloween demanded preparation far beyond selecting a costume. It required a trip to my grandfather’s farm in Hanover, Pennsylvania where we shelled dried corn until our thumbs were raw. Two or three ten-pound flour sacks were filled with corn in preparation for the big night. If you are old enough, you will remember when flour and sugar came in cloth sacks instead of paper. Several were filled by hand shelling as it was cheating to pull corn off the automatic sheller.
We also constructed our own Rat-a-Tat-Tat noise maker. This device consisted of notching the edges of the largest empty wooden thread spool we could find. Instead of a nice round circle, the edges looked like teeth or gear cogs. A wooden dowel rod was inserted into the center of the spool and string was wrapped around the spool.
The final piece of Halloween equipment was a bar of soap. We were instructed not to carry paraffin as it was too difficult to clean off windows. Nevertheless, we would sometimes carry the forbidden wax. Armed with corn, our noise maker, and soap we were off in small packs to carry out our pranks in the small town of Martinsburg, Pennsylvania.
The key was to look for large windows, with people visible inside. Dried corn heaved from a good distance would rattle the windows. Sneaking up to a window, where someone was quietly reading, putting the Rat-a-Tat-Tat to the window and pulling the string was sufficient to lift anyone right out of the chair. Timid souls did not pull this stunt.
The larger boys who were not so well supervised as we were, would tip over out-houses and fill the town square with corn stacks. I recall one year when an unfortunate prankster, while fleeing the scene of remote house, fell into the open pit of an overturned out-house. He survived, but his clothes had to be burned.
How different from the little tykes that now come to our front door and have no knowledge (fortunately) what a trick really means.
Photograph: Strasburg, Virginia