Melting Snow

Midweek Reflections on Halloween

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The "Blogging Circle of Friends "  prompt for DAY 1434
Random Words: market, mind, prank, fleet, applause, roulette, fall, tower

Halloween Reflections

There are twelve days until Halloween, every market in America and possible on Earth is decorated with ghosts, goblins, spiderwebs and faux spiders. Some of the rubber spiders look real enough to frighten a person who doesn't know the custom of decorating fake spiderwebs with fake spiders. I suppose if people didn't know about this custom the first time they saw a decorative web with its accompanying spider they might have a heart attack or faint. That might make a good Halloween plot for a horror story.

My mind wonders back to my childhood and the joy of trick or treating. I remember attending grade school in Blackwell, Oklahoma. Every year, a week or so, before Halloween the teacher would bring in cardboard witches and other paper decorations to jazz up the room for the witching holiday. In the first and second grades we would decorate paper bags with using orange and black crayons to drawn jack o' lanterns and other scary creatures. After school we would take the paper bags home and use them when we went trick or treating.

Halloween was always a joyful and scary occasion. Since Mom usually had to work that night, Grandpa Frank would take us all trick or treating through town. We, my siblings and myself, were fortunate to have Grandpa (or Mom when she didn't have to work) take us around the neighborhood. Grandma never went because she remained home to give out candy to all the little monsters who came to her door. When we returned to my grandparents house we ate some of the candy while Grandpa told us about the pranks he and his friends would play on their neighbors on Halloween.

One of his stories was about putting a neighbor's horse and buggy on top of his house. Even though some of his stories seemed far fetched, I never questioned Grandpa's stories then and I don't question them today I know Grandpa wouldn't lie about the things he did in his youth, all though it's possible he embellished the story to make it more exciting for his grandchildren.

The roulette wheel
of my thoughts spins
each black or red square
holding a memory of Halloween.

From the shadows of memory, fleets of children rise all dressed for trick or treating. I can still see my brothers dressed as cowboys with their toy guns in holsters. Everyone, except my youngest brother, would say "Trick or Treat!" My brother would say "What's up, Doc?" and everybody would laugh. I never did find out it his question got him any more candy then the rest of us. I think the reason he said "What's up, Doc?" was for the applause he sometimes got.

Fall brings Halloween memories
climbing porch steps that my childhood
imagination thought were the towers of castles.