Halloween When I was Little

With Halloween approaching, I thought I would reminisce about this holiday when I was little and still living in Idaho Falls. I can still recall wearing the ghost mask and feeling my warm breath leave condensation inside the mask. I also remember playing with that little wand, waving it around. I thought it was great! I had a little friend from down the street who joined me in going home to home with the help of my siblings. It was a fun time.

To Grandmother's House We Go

My Dad and I walked in through the carport side-door into the dining area and I stood looking into the family room. The front door was open and there were men I didn’t know urgently going upstairs and back down to the main floor. There were large boxes. One box was tall and a man next to it asked my mother if it looked ready to go. I saw clothing from my parents’ closet hanging in the box as if it had been taken directly from closet to box. My mother stood in the middle of the room, energetically responding and giving her approval. The tall box was yellow on the side and had Mayflower printed in large letters that took up the whole side of the box. I knew the Mayflower was one of the three ships that carried the pilgrims to America. The man tilted the box onto a hand truck and pushed it through our front door onto a ramp leading to a large truck with the same Mayflower on yellow printed largely on the trailer. Another man leaning over a square box said to my mother, “I am about to seal this one up. Is everything in there that you want?”  Mom answered in the affirmative and tape cracked loudly as it dispensed across the top, sealing the box.

In the evening, we loaded ourselves into the car. I was in the back seat. We were traveling to my grandmother’s house. I had been there for Christmas the year before and we had gone during summer time. I was comfortable with the idea. My cat, however, was not used to riding in the car. My parents had heard that wrapping the cat in a towel might calm him and would protect us from thrashing claws. My Dad handed Smokey to me, wrapped in a towel and placed on my lap. It didn’t work. He yowled and cried. He sounded terrified and I felt terrible. There was no way for me to convey to him that it was alright. Eventually, I let him out of the towel and he frantically jumped around the seat, to the floor, up into the window, until he crawled under the seat as much as he could, remaining there for the rest of the drive.

It became dark. I looked out the window at distant lights of towns and houses until I became tired. I stretched out on the back seat to sleep. We didn’t worry about seat belts back then. My parents talked quietly. My mother periodically would roll the window down a crack while she smoked a cigarette. She opened the window in consideration of me so that I wouldn’t suffer from the smoke. Most people then didn’t concern themselves much with that, either. Eventually, Mom fell asleep and I watched the back of her head resting on the head rest and moving side-to-side with the car motion. My dad calmly drove, occasionally looking to the side of the road at scenery then back to the road ahead. (When I was a teen, he would explain to me that changing my viewpoint while driving long distance would help prevent eye strain and fatigue.) His driving habits were reassuring to me; everything was under his calm control. I slept until we pulled into my grandmother’s front, dirt parking area, our headlights shining on lilac bushes with pine trees over-hanging. We were there. We had left the city for the country.

I was happy enough at my grandma’s. Her house was an old log cabin that green shake siding had been placed over, while inside, wallboard covered the logs. She had a tall gas furnace that ran up one wall of her living room and it blew warm air out the front through lower and upper vents. I liked to sit on the floor in front of it with the warm air blowing on my back. I would read or draw and be disappointed when the warm air would turn off. Granny worried and fussed about my being cold. She would turn up the thermostat. I tried to assure her I wasn’t cold, “I just like the heat blowing on me. I am ok.” She never really heard and continued to fuss about her poor chilled granddaughter. The linoleum was old, worn, scuffed and it creaked as people walked across it. It just seemed cozy to me.

 

I was enrolled in school, second grade. I had to ride a bus for the first time. I had to wait at a stop about a block down. Soon, snow fell in this mountain town. City trucks would clear the snow off the streets and push it into large piles, especially at the street corners. These piles were several times higher than my height. Even the snow along the sides of the road came above me. It was amazing. It didn’t take me long to learn the joy of climbing on those piles, sliding down, digging caves. My cat wasn’t so happy though. As we became more confined to the house during winter, he became on edge. Granny would talk to the cat in a high pitched voice whenever she let him in or out and she would pat him on the head in a manner that caused him to flatten his ears and looked as if his brains were being jostled. The cat took his stress out on me.

My grandmother’s couch resided against a wall which held the opening leading past the entryway. Granny would let Smokey into the house and greet him in her cat-irritating manner and Smokey would run around the wall, jump onto the couch back, then jump onto my head with claws out on all four feet, tearing sharply into my scalp! I would scream helplessly. On more than one occasion, my Dad came running to smack the cat off of my head, leaving me crying. After one of these episodes, Dad rolled up a newspaper and placed it into my hands. He said, “Next time he does that, you take a newspaper and roll it up like this and hit him with it.” I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hit my cat that I loved. He attacked me again, and again my Dad told me I had to hit the cat. Smokey’s behavior was becoming so predictable, I was ready with a rolled newspaper the next time he came into the house. I knocked him off my head but missed him with the paper. Dad yelled, “Hit him!” Smokey had landed with a splat on the floor and was crouched down. I hit him once on his back with his eyes meeting mine. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was enough. He didn’t attack me anymore. I didn’t realize this was my first example that a good, nice person sometimes has to harden kind feelings and take action to protect oneself. I would come to realize this lesson a few more times over the years.

The cat wasn’t the only one being driven up the wall. Mom was also on edge living with her own mother. We had moved to Hailey because my parents had previously purchased some property there. The plan was to build a shop for my dad where he would run an appliance repair business. They would have a house on the property as well. The shop was built with a small entry facing a wall with an open window for my dad to serve customers. There was a door to the side entering a workroom with a small restroom.  My parents cut their stay at Granny’s short and we moved into the tiny shop to live. The idea of a separate shop/business was abandoned as we lived in it and they gradually built additions on to become our house.