Chapter 1 -
The Harvest Moon
It’s Halloween! All kinds of things take place on this night in the small southern town where I was born. It was a night of pranks, meanness, and revenge! It was one of the favorite nights of the year for those citizens of the great depression. Our choices of tricks were numerous for those with fertile imaginations. It was a common trait; we all possessed a vivid imagination.
Everyone worked hard for very little, compared to the present. Fifty cents a day was welcomed by many unemployed adults, during those tears. Through the week we attended school, barefooted and wild. At three PM when classes were dismissed we all headed home to tend the chores and responsibilities assigned to us. There was kindling to split for building fires in the fireplaces and kitchen stoves and coal to bring in to maintain the fires through the night. In addition, perhaps, a dozen other things from mowing the lawns to milking our cow, ole Dolly, for milk and butter.
When the chores were done it was play time! This is when our imagination came into full bloom. A stick might be a knife, a gun, or a cigarette, depending on the need! In addition, while resources were slim, our needs were great. War clouds swirled over Europe, poverty existed in America, and that brings us to our big need of the week. When Saturday arrived we needed a dime or ten pennies as was often the case, to enter the cool dark theater which was the major source of our imagination. Cowboy shows, rarely referred to as movie were our favorites; newsreels, cartoons, and comedies captivated our young minds. They were experienced again and again and played out dozens of times in our games and thoughts.
We learned much of our morality from the cowboy shows. The good guys in white hats always won the day and the girl. The hero was always clean, never cursed, and was always kind to animals, children, and women. He never struck the first blow or fired the first shot. He rode the finest horse and we all knew the horse’s name. We cheered as he rode on to the scene and booed when he almost, but rarely, kissed the lady. He always said, “Sir and ma’am,” and could hit a postage stamp five hundred yards away with his pistol. The good cowboys were our heroes.
The newsreels were our geography and history books. We learned names and places and what was taking place on faraway shores. We saw newsreels of the war effort in Europe, in the South Pacific, and all the ships at sea. Moreover, when we sat near our dad or in his lap as he listened to the most popular commentators[1] on the radio, we recognized the names and places where battles were being fought. We kept a folded world map nearby if we needed to locate a city or country or another piece of geography that we did not recognize when mentioned by the news men. We followed the progress of the war on two fronts. We were more familiar with the European front than the battles of the Pacific. We were familiar with Hawaii and the Philippine Islands from our studies in geography but names like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Bataan, Midway, and other islands made famous by United States Marines were not familiar to us at the beginning of the war. That’s why we had the map.
The content of the Saturday cartoons was actually more violent than the Saturday afternoon westerns. However, they were usually in color and that was new and exciting. The comedies were filmed of actual people. We loved the characters in Our Gang, the Three Stooges, and of course the Saturday afternoon serials. They were exciting and continuing stories of life and death adventures.
The week was rounded out with Church on Sunday. We attended church regardless of the weather. It was a part of our life, culture, and there, as the preachers spouted hell-fire and damnation; we repented of our childhood sins which seemed to be many. Often, perhaps, too many. Much of our guilt flashed back to the celebration of Halloween or All Saint’s Eve. In my youth, I knew nothing of the religious significance of All Saint’s Eve, but I knew plenty about Halloween.
In those days, little attention was shown to trick or treating! It was all tricking! Some of the more affluent families in our town, if they recognized you, might invite you into their homes for lemonade, cookies, or pop-corn balls. However, the night belonged to the imps and demons. Rarely did one see elaborate costumes, as we see today; instead, we wore a pirate’s patch over one eye and a mustache and beard drawn with the burnt cork from an empty bottle or fishing float. We looked extremely intimidating and often ridiculous. Sometimes we dressed as a ghost, wearing a patched and worn out bed sheet, but those were generally reserved for the radical adult males who wore them with their Ku Klux Klan regalia.
No, we didn’t trick or treat, we called it serenading. We flipped over garbage cans, spilling the contents, and then tossed the empty trash cans into a nearby tree. Often older boys would turn over out-houses[2]. We all had them as there were no sewage projects in our little town during those early years. The favorite of the younger children was to walk through the four blocks of the down town business area with a bar of P&G Soap and mark-up the store windows with signs and stick-men cartoons.
Then, there were those who had barnyards with milk-cows and lived in town. They might take a shovel full of fresh manure, place it in a brown paper bag with a waded up sheet or two of a newspaper. This package was placed on the front door step, lit with a match and then the door bell was rung and the kids would hide in the shrubbery and watch the family member try to stamp out the small fire, only to get their shoes soiled. In time, the residents learned to keep a garden shovel inside the house near the door on Halloween night for the purpose of scooping up the barnyard package and depositing it on the sidewalk away from the house, allowing it to burn out.
The October harvest moon was a spectacular sight in the eyes of a growing child. It usually began as a large orange object covering much of the sky and seemed close enough to toss a baseball through. Yet, in minutes, it changed from the magnificent orange to a blue-white object that grew smaller as it climbed higher into the night sky. It became a Frankenstein moon, a vampire or wolf-man moon and caused us to constantly look over our shoulder as we observed it. We didn’t want something to creep up behind us without our knowledge. It paid to be diligent; one, with an imagination must always keep his eyes open and be alert! On the other hand, as Little Orphaned Annie warned, “Er the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef ya don’t watch out[3]!”
As I ponder it, much of growing up in a small town was being frightened. We were frightened by many things including haunted houses, cemeteries, and certain weird people that we called witches, and other strange people who were simply mean. Spooks and goblins were a part of our natural world and we all carried a four-leaf clover wrapped in a folded piece of paper and kept in our bill fold[4] if we carried nothing more than our Boy Scout Card in it. Other amulets or talismans were a rabbit’s foot along with our lucky penny and even a bent nail. It always paid to be careful. The bent nail came from a tragic event when a school friend walked barefoot in a barn where live-stock was sold and stepped on a rusty nail and died of lock-jaw[5]. From that moment, we carried a rusty bent nail to protect us[6], as sailors and surfers often wore a shark toot necklace. One was doubly protected if one had a buck-eye from a buck-eye tree. Of course there were other things for lesser problems, but the above mentioned items were essential.
In our small town we had many families of color. They were called everything from the “N” word to a softer rendition, Negara, and usually just colored. In time the names and descriptions evolved to blacks, and Afro-Americans. Regardless of what we called them or they called us, from birth to around twelve or thirteen, we called them we and us. We played together, we swam in the creek together, we hunted together and it still grieves me to think of them as them and not simply as friends. That was life in the south seventy years ago.
The focal point of Halloween was always the Harvest Festival, or better known simply as the Halloween Carnival. The carnival was one of the school projects that involved the entire community. Weeks prior to the carnival, children in all grades[7] were admonished to bring objects for the white elephant booth, better known as, Go Fishing! It was usually located in one corner of the auditorium and was fenced off with colorful quilts. In front of the curtain were parents or teachers who charged a dime for the opportunity to fish. The cane fishing pole had a string attached and on the end of the string was a large safety pin. The participating fisherman swung the safety pin up and over the curtain and on the other side one of the attendants would ask boy or girl? Then according to gender, a prize was fastened to the safety pin hook and it was lifted over the curtain by the waiting fisherman.
Sometimes there was a BB gun shooting gallery. There contestants attempted to hit small empty tin cans and knock them off a table. The cans were painted different colors and depending on the size of the can you might win a jar of homemade pickles, a package of cigarettes, a handkerchief or whatever could be scrounged from the local merchants. A similar concession substituted baseballs for BB guns and a third used embroidery rings about five or six inches in diameter. The only limitation was one’s imagination.
One of the most popular games was the Cake Walk! This consisted of a circular track about thirty feet in diameter divided into segments, numbered from one to forty, maybe even fifty. A cake was displayed on a small table in the center of the circle. Money was received for admission to the walk and the music began, and the contestants marched in a clockwise direction around the track until the music stopped. Everyone was now standing on a number. A number was drawn from a hat or small pasteboard box. The number was announced and the person standing on the number drawn from the box won the cake.
Usually, there was a contest for the best original Halloween costume. As simple as it was in the late 1930’s, it was fun and entertaining. Look at the alternatives, the same movie played every night during a given week, there was no such thing as television, and radio was limited, therefore we all joined the citizens of our town and attended the Halloween Carnival.
When we arrived at the school we usually left our parents and joined our pals to check out the situation for the evening. I had lots of friends, but only a few pals. Billy and Bobby Leopard lived on the corner a block north of us. Their mom and mine were close friends. Billy and Bobby were twins and were born in June, I was born in December. The six month interval allowed them to enter school a year before I did. It seemed unfair, but life, in those days was unfair. The Leopard twins had a younger brother, Johnny Mack and a younger sister, Sarah Kelly. I experienced a love, hate, relation with the twins; we fought each other at times and defended each other at other times. Despite our differences, we were pals. Although they were twins, they were as different as daylight from dark. Billy was tall and blond Bobby was short and brunette.
Illustration # 7 Louie Ligtening Bug
Louie the Lightening Bug
Logo of the Alabama Power Company
Their father was the superintendent of the Alabama Power Company and died in a storm while on a ladder attempting to restore power. The wind blew his ladder onto a high tension wire and he was electrocuted. To this day I still remember the next morning being in my parent’s bedroom and the twins called me to the open window and informed me that their daddy had died in the storm. It was sad, they were so young! Shortly afterwards their family moved to Tuscaloosa and it was years before I saw them again.
My next childhood pal was a year younger. Ellis Allan Tinsley’s father was an executive with the Smith Lumber Company and lived three blocks from me. Ellis Allan’s dad drove a Roadmaster Buick that was big and neat. We didn’t have a car; dad said we didn’t need one because town was only two blocks away from our home; our Methodist Church was about six blocks and school only five blocks. I guess he was right; at least he didn’t buy one until I left home for college. I didn’t see much difference, but I guess my parents were getting older and by then needed one.
I was the oldest of three children, all boys and all of us had our own interests. I was born at home, December 8, 1932, four years into the great depression. I had brown hair and brown eyes and was a skinny kid that never met a stranger, or a challenge that I didn’t try to solve. I was an “A” student with a quick mind and a vivid imagination that got me into trouble more than once. Later in high school I was a member of the Beta Club, a national scholastic honors organization.
I loved scouting and couldn’t wait until I became twelve years of age and could join Troop #41 of Red Bay. Baby Fred McCarthy earned the first Eagle award received in Red Bay, I received the second Eagle Award and the first God and Country Award in the state of Alabama. I was tapped into membership in the Order of the Arrow, the National Brotherhood of Boy Scout Honor Campers and later as an adult earned the Scouter’s Key and the highest training award offered in scouting, The Wood badge! I organized Boy Scout Troops and Cub Scout Packs all over north Alabama during my forty-three years as an active United Methodist Minister. My two brothers also earned the Eagle award. However, I’m getting a head of my journey!
My favorite sport was football and played the game while in Junior Hi, Senior Hi, and my first year in college. Double knee injuries ended that part of my life.
