Halloween

Short of Christmas, I do not think that any other holiday in the calendar year brought as much frenetic activity (sugar highs ?) and delight to the Parrish household as did Halloween. Besides being my favorite holiday, the fervent imagination of our oldest, Cecilia, coupled with the last-minute-pressed-into-service costume making skills of Katie, and the voracious appetites of all of us for the Trick-or-treat spoils made this a legendary time.

So many antics over the years fell on this holiday that this will be a compendium of all of them that stand out in my memory.

I have early visions of Cece walking down Main Street in Placerville in the children’s parade. She is housed in a large box, decorated to look like a Christmas present. Another year, in San Ardo, she was a chick, complete with yellow crepe paper “feathers” on her sneakers and a tail of the same material, her whole body being wrapped in the stuff. She won 1st place in the costume judging, beating out many store-bought/ glitzy outfits!!!!!! The year we were in Powell, Idaho, Dan was Pooh Bear, wrapped in a yellow, fuzzy sleeper and a short red T shirt. The belly was all his !!!!!!!!

Our move to Davis, coupled with Cece’s advancing years and tastes brought on a more sinister flavor to our costuming. Desiring to make EVERYONE into a punk rocker, both Daniel and I sported Mohawks and could be seen in torn clothing, draped in chains and wearing some of Kate’s earrings. One year, Dan was “Mr. Money” with play money glued all over whatever he was wearing underneath and sporting large dollar bill sandwich boards. Rebecca seemed to escape this treatmen, my memories of her are as a fairy or ballarina, and later in Yakima a cow or a Medieval princess on a horse (the horse part of the costume actually being around her waist...a two legged horse?). Dan was a Wizard one year and Katie dutifully sewed robes and a wizard hat. Then, in Junior High, Cece abandoned costumes all together and with her friends Flannery and Colleen, could be seen screaming and running down the streets of Davis followed by a panting paternal figure allegedly close by for “protection” though I wonder what madman would take on those three and survive to tell about it. The piles of candy on the floor of the front room after these mad forays beggar description. Oh, the trading and bargaining that went on! “I will give you five Tootsie Rolls for one mini-Snickers” etc. I DO remember furtive parental hands reaching into the piles to casually pick out a coveted morsel or six hoping to escape detection.

Even later, in Washington where snow was on the ground for our first Halloween (1991) and in later years it was COLD and wet, we would bundle our gang, Theresa and Byron Borton and Scotty Brewer into a Chevy Suburban of whichever family and drive the country roads to isolated and far between houses of friends that waited to be descended upon. Was this a modern version of a pioneer Halloween? One year, in Yakima, we had a neighborhood pumpkin carving contest and there were about forty people and 17 or 18 pumpkin entries. The compost sprouted hundreds of pumpkin plants the following spring!

For several Halloweens in Dan’s later years (in Yakima), much gory detail and destruction was heaped upon the old house by the Borton’s corrals., transforming it into a haunted house. Byron, Dan and Scotty, along with others would slap red paint on the walls, strategically place skulls and blinking lights in corners, drape cobwebs and imbed axes and hatchets in the walls. The crowning touch was Byron, laying in the old bathtub covered with sheets dabbed in red paint and food coloring all over him. On his chest was a real beef liver. Sound effects were rampant (even a real, running chain saw) and Cece and friends and later youth groups from Bill and Marla’s religious education classes were scared and delighted by the macabre scene.

EVERY Halloween our gang had a big pumpkin carving mess in the kitchen, always ending up with happy, scary or surprised jack-o-lanterns. This has continued to this day and even though we are separated by distance, cell phone pictures of our respective creations are sent back and forth on the air waves. I doubt, until the event of grandchildren, that the much beloved holiday will ever be the same again. Then, watch out !!!!!!!!