A look back at Halloween in less scary times

Boo to you! During this year of “social distancing,” non scary face masks and no trick-or-treating, it’s worth looking back at the years when the only things scar y were the trick-or-treaters.

Those really were “the good old days.”

Some of the best stories of this time of year came from my father-in-law, Al Lupus. Al was a farm kid in the 1920s and 1930s. He and his immigrant Lebanese father had a small fruit farm in Orem, Utah, where they raised mostly peaches and apples.

Some of Al’s Halloween pranks were classics, such as the time that he and a buddy, (Al must have been around 10 years old at the time) came up with a great prank on a neighbor.

The neighbor was also a farmer, and he had a large draft horse, whom I’ll call Fido. (Is that an appropriate name for a horse?)

In those days, homes were heated with wood and coal, and most homes had a large kitchen stove. The tops of these stoves were black cast iron, and in order to keep them shining and black, a product called “Stove Polish” was sold. It was a water soluble, black polish that a housewife would apply to her stovetop to keep it tidy.

Al’s neighbor was also a farmer, and also an immigrant, whose master y of English was a bit short. Al said his speech was “colorful.” Well, on Halloween night, Al and his buddy crept into Fido’s barn, carr ying a can of stove polish, and “painted” Fido a sort of ragged black.

When the “artists” finished, he didn’t resemble the Fido of old. He was a horse of a different color.

Well, sadly for him, his owner didn’t recognize him, shooed him away ever y time he approached, and wondered and worried who could have stolen Fido. It took a good rainstorm a week later to reveal to the neighbor what was underneath the stove blacking.

Al still laughed about it 70 years later. it was quite a prank.

Another one Al pulled off at about the same time was once more with his best friend. The prank involved a few cloves of garlic, a couple pairs of feet, and the old wooden floors in his elementary school.

He and his friend planned to stage their prank during a recess. They snuck back into the school, each of them took a few cloves of garlic, smashed them on the floor, and shuffling their feet over the garlic, proceeded to spread the odorous mash through the hallways.

By the time recess was over, the smell was enough to knock one down — especially the principal, who soon had to send the kids home and call for the janitor.

I’m afraid there were other such stories in my father-in-law’s repertoire.

Moving ahead a few decades, when our five kids were of the age to trick-or-treat, it seems our sons were cut of the same material as their grandpa Al.

Living in Orem, a small Utah town at the time, it seemed almost everyone had a couple of fruit trees in their backyard. Apples were the hardiest, and there were plenty of them that were reserved for the horde of trick-or-treaters that descended on our neighborhood each Halloween.

I might also add that an apple deposited in most kids’ booty bags was not appreciated. Many of them were used as missiles to pelt the donor’s house by the neighborhood recipients. They preferred candy —please.

Most of the homes had screen doors, and one clever trick was to take a length of fishing line (with hook attached) file the barb off and then, when leaving the front porch of the apple depositor, hook the apparatus to the screen, pull it tight, then take a cloth and putting pressure on the cloth, slide it up and down the fish line. It created the sound of a horrible moan, as if someone (or “thing”) was suffering on the front porch.

The hook was quickly undone, and the perpetrators hied off down the street, watching the homeowner, as he/she, tried to figure out where the scream came from.

By the time our youngest son, Kelly, was able to join his brothers on their treat gathering forays, Pat and Michael had graduated to carrying old pillowcases to hold the take. They would ply the nearby areas for a couple of hours before coming home. The pillowcases were usually bulging by then.

But on one Halloween night, we heard Kelly before we saw him — he was cr ying mad.

It seems that his pillowcase was taller than he was, and as the weight increased in the bag, it drew closer to the ground. Soon a hole was worn in the fabric, and a trail of treats were left behind — a trail that would have been appreciated by Hansel and Gretel.

When the boys reached home, Kelly followed his brothers into our living room, where Patrick and Michael dumped their booty onto the floor.

Then Kelly’s rather slack sack was upended to spill out the contents — there was only one thing remaining: Another dratted apple.

You know, I think I’d have cried too.