HALLOWEEN chapter 64

I loved being involved with planning the Halloween party. My first experience at helping to plan anything of any size was also a Halloween Party. This event would never have happened without my first roommate Doug. He was no longer a student and I can’t remember whether he attended on not. He should have.

The big job was cleaning the barn so it would be useable for the barn party. Several groups worked over many days scraping, shoveling, sweeping and getting the mess out. As I recall there were plenty of hay bales there. We stacked them around the sides for seating, broke some up and spread the straw on the floor to cover what we couldn’t scrap off. Once cleaned and lighted the barn with the assistance of a generator, we moved inside to create a tunnel of horror maze people had to walk through to get upstairs. It was the best we could do for a haunted house.

There were tunnels to walk through, tunnels to crawl through, squishy things hands pressed against, threads that tickled the face, dark stairs to climb and things I can’t remember. Probably we had someone grabbing ankles at they climbed the stairs.

The Tuck Shop girl and I were talking much more. We were both working with the social committee getting the party together which meant we saw each other more. I worked on constructing the tunnel and she was hanging thread. There was always a crew around working on something.

(She would never forgive me for posting this photo, but it's the only one I have of her at Tuck Shop and that's how we met.)

1.            The Halloween band. They played great hoedown music and we could tap and clap, but not dance. Shucks!

2.            Don’t know about the nose deal with Ron G. and Ray.

3.            One of the many skits with Vi and Mel.

4.            Vi is letting Mel have it over something.

5.            Clyde and Steve in some blackface skit. That could not happen today. I can’t remember the idea behind it, but at the end we rolled toward the center where a blanket covered a hole to the main floor and dropped through it.

6.            The party poster. It looks like my work, but how would I know. That was 50 years ago.

7.            The quartet: Jim, Dean, Gene and Ron S..

8.            Betty and Gene singing with Jim playing.

9.            Linda in her own skit. It not mistaken she was acting as Mr. Johnstone driving somewhere.

10.         Bob and Miss. A. She was always game for s skit and always funny.

As always corrections or additions to this information are always appreciated.

The beauty of all the skits was that everyone wrote their own scripts and that always added to the humor. Lots of spontaneity.

To this event I escorted Della on out first official date. It was definitely one to remember. We went together and came back together. While there we both had a lot to do to keep the party moving and we barely even saw one another. We should have known that it would become the story of our loves, but we were young, naive, and deeply in like. Thus began many dates of short talks and red licorice. We couldn’t have long talks. That was against the rules. It might have been better to remain friends.