Connected While Apart
Halloween Remembered

pumpkins just east of Genoa, early Saturday morning, October 24, 2020

Dear Mayfield,
In all of the upheaval of this year and with the cancellation or alteration of so many beloved Halloween traditions, I wanted to offer us a visual of what remains constant  — it is October, and the pumpkins are abundant.  Pumpkins are a point of pride in Illinois as our state is the leading pumpkin producer in the nation.  Feast your eyes on all that vibrant orange.  Soak in a truckload of this superfood, absent of gluten and brimming with Vitamin A.  Imagine a jack-o’-lantern grinning back at you. With the beginning of November just two days away, a month that opens with the spiritual invitation to remember,  I thought I would take a few moments on paper to offer some Halloween memories I carry around.  And I would encourage you to set a bit of time aside for your own Halloween recollections.

• I grew up in an old American Foursquare house.  When you entered the front door, you were in a square shaped room we called the hall.  It was there that a card table was set up late in October.  For several early mornings before Halloween, my father would cook popcorn on the stove and I would bag it in Halloween treat bags, twist the top, and lay them out on the card table. When we were done,  I walked to school and my father drove to the college to teach his 8 am class.
• My go to costume as a child was a black cotton coat that snapped up the front.  I’m sure my mother sewed it.  Glued all over it were orange and yellow moons and stars.  On my head went a black witch’s hat, and I was all set.  In upstate New York all costumes needed to be large enough to accommodate several layers of clothes beneath them.  It was cold, and in our town, trick or treating stretched out over two nights.
• My first year in seminary, I wore my best Halloween costume ever.  My friend Susan, with a theater background and a tight seminarian’s budget, managed to dress herself as the tin woodman, David as the scarecrow, me as the cowardly lion, and Lynn (a male) as Dorothy in Nancy’s dirndl dress from Germany.  A stuffed dog, replicating Toto, rode in my handled basket, slung over Dorothy’s arm.  We were a hit at the campus Halloween party.
• That same year I made an outrageous statement at lunch one October day. While flirting with a classmate, I said that if someone bought me a pumpkin, I would make a pumpkin pie.  You need to know that I had never made a pumpkin pie or any kind of pie as I issued that challenge. Sure enough, one of my male classmates presented me with a pumpkin at dinner.  Somehow with a delicious pumpkin, the limited utensils and baking items in a dormitory kitchen, my paperback copy of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, the courage of youth, a few friends, and a hungry audience, I managed to pull off the pie feat the next Friday afternoon when none of us had class.
• Halloween was the one time a year that I reliably dug my old Singer ¾ sized featherweight sewing machine out of the closet to create costumes for Amanda and Molly.  Every year, whether it was clothes for a princess, a Japanese lady or a witch, I would be up way too late the night before finishing up the sewing.  And every year, I would promise myself that  I would make costumes in August the following year.  I never did.  There were two non-sewing years — the black and white year when Amanda was a die — a box, paint, and cording, and Molly was a cow (a Holstein) — white sweatsuit with black felt patches and the Dr. Seuss year when they were Thing One and Thing Two — red sweatsuits, a number 1 or 2, and white wigs that had to be transformed into blue wigs.  Those costumes were great memory makers. Just ask either Molly or Amanda about the year they had to wear their coats.  Oh, how they can still carry on about that horrible decision I made.  It was unusually cold, almost frigid in Saint Louis and raining, and I insisted the Japanese ladies wear coats over their costumes.  They have never forgotten.

I could go on for at least another page, but will stop there.  Why should I confess to buying Halloween candy on sale one year in September, eating it, and then having to buy more before the trick or treaters arrived?  This did happen, but only once.  I hope everyone who is reading this has some Halloween delight from years past to treasure in the challenge of these days.
Peace, Martha