Neighb.parties this week!

Dunn’s Marsh Neighborhood Association e-Notice
                                                                                            10/29/13



Neighborhood Party Notices
      1 - Halloween Party for Kids, Oct. 31, 5-8 pm
       2 - Stews & Blues Party for All Ages, Sat., Nov. 2, 6-10 pm
      3 - Halloween Memories
      4 - Annual Meeting Pics (Attachment:  “pics annual mtg.jpg”)
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Articles

1 - Halloween Party for Kids, Oct. 31, 5-8 pm

Prairie UU. Society, 2010 Whenona Drive, invites you to a hauntingly good Halloween party, October 31, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Come in for a  “bite” to eat, drink spooooky cider, and monster mash on the dance floor.

All neighborhood kids are welcome along with adults who are chaperoning them for trick or treat activities in the neighborhood. Stop in as you pass by.
                                                            from Prairie UU Society.
 
                                                                                                           

2 - Stews & Blues Party for All Ages, Sat., Nov. 2, 6-10 pm




3 - Halloween Memories

I never had the bad experience of my mother choosing and making a Halloween witch costume that freaked me out.  I never had to dress as a caveman to please my mother although that costume caused horrible humiliation to the boy who wore it and additional mortification to admit it was an a outstanding idea when he won first prize at the school contest.  I don’t even remember the childhood Halloween get-ups I wore for this candy-filled holiday.

Nonetheless, Halloween was a stellar event between 4th of July with all its beautiful and scary fireworks and Christmas, a child’s Garden of Eden.  That day, October 31, which was always celebrated on that date as opposed to some more convenient weekend day, was a day of wonder.

The day after Halloween was equally exciting.  It was the time to survey little Wauzeka, WI, for evidence of one of the items mentioned in the little rhyme we all prepared to say as we knocked on a door or rang a doorbell and waited with a combination of anxiety and hope.  Our 2-line verse was, “Trick or treat, Money or eats.”  

Nowadays, what kids know more than the first 3 words?  I’ve never found any.  They just look at me with vacant eyes when I ask, “Do you know the next line?”  I think I once saw that two more lines finished the verse, but a quick look on the Internet found no such thing.
Usually we got treats when the door opened:  candy bars, hard candy in many colors, or home made treats like fudge or popcorn balls.  No fear in the 1950s of razor blades in storebought or home- prepared sweets.

We never got money although then even 5 cents would have seemed like a fortune to a 10-year-old.  I didn’t get an allowance, I was too young to babysit for 25 cents or less an hour, and I was always encouraged to save the $3 check that my grandmother sent from Kentucky faithfully each Christmas, Easter, and birthday.

Being a minister’s kid, I never did tricks to a stingy door-opener or someone who wouldn’t even crack the door to young witches and ghosts.

The tricks were what I searched for the next day, November 1st.  Tricks were everywhere.  They were almost better than Halloween itself.

First we kids would check our own front screen door.  Had someone  scribbled or written dirty words in soap there?  Or had they used the impossible to remove paraffin?  Had they covered a nearby porch window with Ivory or wax?  I knew how hard it was to remove paraffin or candle wax.

Next, I would look out the kitchen window to the outdoor privy behind the church which was right next door.  Every year, the outhouse had been tipped over.  

I would rush out the back door, around the house, and to the churchyard to view the telephone-booth-sized house on its side close-up.  Was it door down or door gaping to the side? If it was door down, I might knock or yell to see if someone was trapped inside.  Of course I’d look in horror at the stinky contents in the now-exposed square hole.  I could see a lot more in the full daylight than any time when the only view was through the open seat in dim light when the house was upright.

The next place on my itinerary was downtown Wauzeka, a short 4-block walk.  That’s where unbelievable sights greeted the amazed eyes of every young child.  On the main street, I’d check the store windows for those self-same but much larger scrawls that appeared on our screen door and porch windows.  I was never disappointed.  Big white scribbly circles blasted out at me from picture windows of the businesses.  Always.

But best of all was what I saw on the top of buildings.  Atop the only flat-topped commercial buildings, full-sized cars - the only kind of cars back in the 1950s - and gigantic farm machinery sat big as life.  “Who did it?” I wondered.  More importantly, how had they done it?  How can anyone put a 2000-pound vehicle or piece of equipment on top of a roof?  Take note, the cranes we see everyday here constructing 12-story apartment buildings or lifting girders onto the Seminole Highway bridge did not exist in my small town.

Do kids do pranks like this anymore?  If they did, I’m sure they’d be found out and arrested.  Halloween is tame these days.
                                                                                                
                                                                                                                    by Mary Mullen


4 - Annual Meeting Pics (Attachment:  “pics annual mtg.jpg”)

Click on the attachment to see people who attended the DMNA Annual meeting on October 10.  The newly-elected DMNA Neighborhood Council is featured.  We can have 5 more Council members.  Contact Mary Mullen mmullen@chorus.net> or call 298-0843 to volunteer.

----  End of the 10/27/13 Dunn’s Marsh Neighborhood e-News Notice ---