Blast from the Past: Kindergarten Halloween

I have A lot of Loves to thank for the idea for this post.  The rules are, first, open the oldest picture file in your computer. Scroll to the tenth photo.  Post the photo and the story behind it.

So, here goes.

At the left, you can see a faded newspaper photo of a young Halloween witch.  That's me, age 5, from kindergarten.  The date is 1974.

At our elementary school, weather permitting, every year on Halloween party day we had a parade.  Our school sat on an entire (smallish) city block, tucked into a neighborhood, about two blocks off of a busy street.  In those days, we walked to school - the neighborhood school was more than just a concept, it was a reality.  Our neighborhood school housed grades kindergarten through five, and came complete with a paved playground (for the younger kids) that had a tall slide, a handful of those "bouncy" seat toys with the huge industrial springs beneath them, and a set of monkey bars.  Jump ropes and kick balls rounded out recess play time.  The playground for the older kids sloped down toward the other end of the school, nice and grassy with dandelions in the summer, and nothing but hard-packed dirt by the time the first month of school had passed.  The older kids didn't have playground equipment - they played kickball, or gathered in clusters to talk and walk about during lunch and before school.

Lunch?  We walked home for lunch.  Very few kids packed a lunch and ate at school.  I don't remember how much time we had for lunch, but it was enough for me, at age 5, to walk home with my older sisters to eat a sandwich (made by mom) and change into a Halloween costume and then walk back to school.

In those days, we changed into our costumes after lunch, at home, and walked back to school, resplendently dressed as hobos, witches, gypsies, pirates, or robots (tin-foil wrapped boxes with armholes).  Halloween costumes at that time were composed of whatever you could find at home to put together.

Mom had a box of miscellaneous stuff that we used from year to year.  Masks, old pieces of furniture coverings (remember slipcovers?) some of which  made really great "gypsy shawls," and hats like the one I'm wearing in this photo. 

Something in the processing of the photo has caused me to look like I have a huge swath of sun screen on my nose.  But that day, the day of our kindergarten Halloween parade, was slightly overcast.  We walked, single-file, and sometimes in pairs, following our teachers like little ducklings, around the block of our school.  Neighborhood people came out to watch us, standing on the sidewalks opposite our school, or sitting on their front porch steps.  Parents came and lined the sidewalks, cameras in hand, to snap a picture (perhaps, a polaroid? ) of their little goblins.

That day, I remember walking past a very tall couple (hey, every adult is tall when you're only 5).  They were a well-dressed woman with red hair, and a tall smiling man with a beard and mustache, holding a very large camera.  They were talking to my teacher, who called me back, and asked if I'd like to have my picture taken for the newspaper.  The couple were from our local newspaper, and were looking for a picture of a witch to take for the paper that would be published on or near Halloween.  Of course I said "yes," and promptly forgot to tell my parents when I got home from school.

I don't remember what my parents said when they saw my face looking at them from the inside pages of the newspaper, but my mom collected many copies of it to send to family.

Anyway, this was 1974 and so with my teacher's permission, I gave the nice lady my name and address, my age and grade, and told her who my parents were.  The nice smiling man with the camera took my picture, and the rest is history.

Little did I know that many years later, during a summer job in college, I'd meet these people again - at my workplace.  But that's for another day.

My witch hat was shiny plastic, and not very tall.  It was held onto my head with a piece of black elastic, put under the chin.  I'm wearing a white blouse with a lace collar.  I probably wore a black skirt that day, and my tennis shoes.  Did I have a black witch's cape? I don't recall.  More probable is that I'm wearing a navy blue sweater that buttoned up the front.  It was October, and though it was early afternoon, it was still chilly enough to need something besides just shirtsleeves.  The trees would have been in full, glorious color, a combination of brilliant maple tree oranges, burnished brown oak leaves, and loads of reddish brown chestnuts on the ground, perfect for shuffling sneakered feet through, leaving slim trails with mounds of leaves and chestnuts and acorns on either side.

Don't ask me why a witch would have fangs.  I have no idea - except that I must have seen them at the store, in the Halloween display, and thought it would be a nice addition to my witchly get-up.  I was five, and I guess mom indulged me on that one. 

After our Halloween parade would come the party.  For kindergarten, we likely spent the afternoon passing out cupcakes which would have frosting licked off and then be left forgotten on small, round tables, only to be thrown away later; peanut butter kisses (those hard, toffee-like things in the orange and black wrappers), tootsie-pop suckers, popcorn balls, and an apple or two.  In the days before juice boxes or bags, we'd have Dixie cups of punch.  There were probably a few games or two, carefully supervised by our classroom teacher and aide, and the parents who came to help with the party.  Coloring was a highlight of the day, along with some construction-paper craft of a cat with an accordion-pleat tail or a grinning jack-o-lantern or some such thing.

At 3:00, we'd all head home, a motley procession of multi-sized kids clutching our school papers, jackets or sweaters, pieces of Halloween costume, and Halloween treats.  We'd head home and beg mom to let us leave the costume on until trick-or-treats were done - or take off the costume almost with reverence, setting it aside for the next day if Halloween fell on a weekend, looking forward to roaming our neighborhood with our friends.  We always knew that one neighbor would give pennies, another would have apples that were usually bruised so those would end up in the fridge, uneaten; others would have Clark candy bars, another would have religious tracts but usually those had a sucker or popcorn ball with them, so it was all right.  Anything chocolate was prime. Hard pieces of individually wrapped gum were the last thing to disappear from the stash.  Though our parents said don't eat anything until you get home, we always snuck a piece of chocolate on the walk home.

So - what's in your photo files?