Purrs and howdys, Kittens & Dawgs! For the next three weeks, I plan to bring to you Halloween memories from my childhood in my Throw Back Thursday series. Today, I’m reminiscing of masks, treat bags, candy, and more!
Halloween is wildly popular with adults more so than I remember it ever being as a kid. I liked dressing up when my folks could afford it but usually all we got was a plastic mask and that was pretty darn neat!
Here’s just a few…
BAT GIRL
I think my best friend wore one like this.
CLEOPATRA
I was Queen of the Nile one year and I not only had the mask but an inexpensive costume. I was so excited to wear a real costume, maybe too excited because I ran out the front door and tripped into a big mud puddle. Soaked to the bone, I returned home to change clothes. I was miserable for messing up my new costume and the cold, wet weather made things worse. I really wanted to wear the complete outfit because it was my first time to have a nifty costume. In the end, I had a lot of fun and getting lots of candy made me feel better. 🙂
GYPSY PRINCESS
Another year, I was a Gypsy but nohave a costume. Seeing this mask reminds me of the vintage classic, “The Wolf Man”. I plan to talk about that in another installment. 😉
To collect the hordes of candy, most of the time we used a paper bag to hold our candy loot. I almost remember us decorating our paper bags like this, except I don’t think my jack-o-lantern ever wore a patch.
Sometimes, I used a small plastic pumpkin shaped Halloween bucket sorta like one below. This is what we got our children.
DH said he used an orange heavy-duty plastic bag and believe it or not, we have his “trick or treat” bag some where in this house. All three of the kids used it at one point. I think it’s awesome that they were able to use some of the things from DH’s boyhood.
Most of our Halloween stash consisted of “penny candy” along with a few pieces of chocolate or bubblegum.
However, if we were really lucky sometimes the women in our community would go the extra mile to give us home-made popcorn ball or candy or caramel apples. Now, that was a real treat!
A fun thing we liked to buy just days before Halloween was candy waxed lips especially the fang version.
Candy implies you can eat it but these waxed lips weren’t disgestible. The best we could do was chew on the flavored wax like gum until our jaw couldn’t take it anymore. It seems like such a waste now but it was part of a fun childhood experience and one I wouldn’t give up.
I found a fun Halloween playlist of 50s and 60s tunes on YouTube, many made before I was born but know very well today and some released during my youth. So, I will sign off for now with a bit of mewsic.
- That Old Black Magic – Peggy Lee 1952 (0:07)
- The Headless Horseman – Bing Crosby 1953 (0:43)
- Witchcraft – Frank Sinatra 1957 (1:14)
- The Monster Hop – Burt Convy 1958 (1:50)
- Love Potion #9 – The Searchers 1959 (2:24)
- Grim Grinning Ghosts – Buddy Baker 1962 (3:00)
- Beware – Bill Buchanan 1962 (3:37)
- Little Red Riding Hood – Sam the Sham and the Pharahos 1968 (4:15)
- Season of the Witch – Donovan 1966 (4:59)
- Boris the Spider – The Who 1966 (5:34)
- Sympathy For The Devil – The Rolling Stones 1968 (6:10)
- Spooky – Classic IV 1969 (6:44)
- Bad Moon Rising – Credence Clearwater Rival CCR 1969 (7:21)
Did you dress up for Halloween? What was your favorite treat?
Please join me next time for Friday Fun Stuff Sillies Only Edition!
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I love Halloween! Excellent post. I still love popcorn balls 🙂
My favorite memory was when my grandmother made me a princess costume. We got mostly small candies, and as you said, sometimes a popcorn ball, and we collected them in a pillowcase.
I remember those masks so well and it was so tough to breathe wearing one. My mom didn’t like them so she made our outfits from what we had lying around. She was really creative. I was a witch once (some say I am that quite often:)) and she made my crooked nose from bandaids that she applied to my nose and painted it flesh colour and she even put some hair on the end with the wart. I love Halloween but my street is becoming quite quiet now. Oh, another time, I was a space lady and she sewed my costume and put sparkle on the collar and made my ray gun from a spatula that she wrapped in tin foil.
I did dress up for Halloween. I was Cleopatra and a gypsy! So similar costumes. I didn’t even really have a costume as a gypsy. I wore a white dress and put on lots of jewelry and kerchief around my head.
I always remember it being horribly cold and us having to drive to various relatives for Halloween. I don’t do that with my kiddos. I let them wander the neighborhood collecting treats.
Yes, I liked going out trick or treating as a kid. We had a big friendly neighborhood and people did sometimes give us homemade treats. Now our kids are all grown and very few come to our neighborhood to trick or treat so it is a quiet time. I don’t decorate anymore. Thanks for sharing.
Janet,
We aren’t into Halloween anymore, either. I still like doing stuff for the two of us. I plan to make home-made caramels, so we can melt and dip apple slices in as that’s a whole lot easier than to eat it on a stick which is super messy! I probably will make some home-made caramel corn, too. Double yum! I’ve made popcorn balls in the past but I like caramel corn better. Sometimes we’ll watch a spooky movie or spooky comedy. I’m sorta in the mood to see “Young Frankenstein”. That’s a hilarious movie!
Yes, love Young Frankenstein.
Well, that was fun! I did not go for masks, but instead just used make-up to accent my costumes. It was a different world back then. Thanks for the memories, my friend. HUGS.
Annie,
The only time I remember using makeup was later in the 70s but it wasn’t really for Halloween. One fall, my close friend Laney had a PJ party. We decided it would be great fun to cover our faces with white makeup, wear sheets, and go out in the night freezing in the headlights of on-coming cars. I’m sure the drivers thought we were all nuts. We went my house which was just across the road and my mom thought we were all kookie. There was never a worry or what are y’all doing out after dark speeches from our parents because there weren’t any worries like there is today. The age of innocence is gone, gone, gone!
Hi, Cathy!
This is a super H-ween post! When I was a kid I was obsessed with monsters. Most years on trick-or-treat night I wore regular street clothes and a large rubber monster mask that covered most of my head. I always begged to get the more expensive, well made masks, the ones that resembled the creatures I had seen in horror movies and in the horror comics my brother and I read. One Halloween, just for a change, my dad built me a “pea head” costume that was inspired by an episode of the Our Gang comedies. The costume consisted of a large adult overcoat with a lightweight wooden framework inside designed to rest upon my shoulders and make me three or four feet taller. Dad attached a softball to the end of a broom handle and ran it up through the coat and out the top. With Magic Marker he drew a comical face on the softball. Small holes cut in the coat allowed me to see well enough to make my rounds of the neighborhood. My custom made pea head costume drew many favorable comments. Visibility wasn’t great and I remember tripping and falling in that getup a few times.
I love your collection of Halloween hits and misses of the 50s and 60s. Novelty ditties are my specialty, but I admit that quite a few of these were brand new to me. They include “The Monster Hop” by Burt Convy, the recording artist who originally sang in the rock ‘n’ roll group The Cheers and went on to host a number of TV game shows. Sadly Burt died young. A couple of other pre-Beatles spook songs that I never heard before are “Grim Grinning Ghosts” by Buddy Baker and
“Beware” by Bill Buchanan. I enjoyed them all!
Your memories of receiving homemade treats at the doors of neighbors hark back to a time when kids felt safe going out at night. Then came the 1970s when, as a news reporter, I started noticing reports of children being injured by razor blades inserted in apples or candy and made ill by rat poison and other foreign substances added to their treats. Fortunately I haven’t heard of any tampering incidents in recent years. Have you?
I also love your pretty witch pinup. Thank you very much, dear friend Cathy!
Tom,
The Halloween costume your dad designed sounds cool but cumbersome. I understand why it tripped you up a time or two but what memories! The song tracks you weren’t familiar with, I wasn’t either. It’s a nice collection and I’m glad that I came across it. Living in rural West Virginia in the 60s felt safe and simple. We lived in a close-knit community of parents watching over neighbors’ kids like their own. There were no worries of anyone hurting a child and often times people left their front doors unlocked. I remember that razor blade scare and poisoning incidents in the 70s. It really put people on guard. To my knowledge, I haven’t heard of anything like this in years and I wonder if it’s because of how trick or treating is done these days. It pays to keep kids off the street and away from strangers’ homes. Church or other organized fall/Halloween events are best for this sort of fun.