Halloween in the "olden days"

Halloween was fun where I grew up in McGill, Nevada, but our celebration was in some ways different from what kids do now. We went trick or treating, but didn’t have costume parades in school. Our costumes were made at home, not bought in stores. Some of our treats were packaged candy, but more were homemade. We got lots of homemade cookies and apples, and sometimes fudge or caramels wrapped in wax paper. My parents always made popcorn balls. One family gave everyone a nickle (Probably worth a quarter now). They were the most popular house in town.

Some Halloween traditions were a lot of fun for older kids, but not for the grownups in town. In those days it was common for boys to write on car windows with wax. But the wax was hard to get off, so it made people mad. Eventually, that tradition died out.

Rolling garbage cans, however, did not. McGill is built on a hill. Some streets run horizontal along the hillside, while others run vertically up and down the hill. An alley runs between each row of houses. The alley is where the power poles are, where everybody has their detached garages, and where they keep their garbage cans for weekly pick up. Every year, several days before Halloween, kids would steal the large metal garbage cans, roll them to the end of the alley, then let them roll for several blocks down the streets on the hill. People learned to paint their names on their cans so that, after Halloween, they could find them in the heap of garbage cans at the bottom of the hill. We could sit in our living room at night and listen to the cans clatter as they rolled. My father didn’t like retrieving our garbage cans, so he hid them in the yard close to the house.

The most exciting thing about Halloween in McGill was the after-dark community bonfire party. Most of the town showed up. The Community League built three huge bonfires at one end of the baseball park. The bonfires were constructed with logs like telephone poles laid teepee style. They burned with crackling flames shooting high into the night sky and sparks flying everywhere. Everybody played games and ran races for prizes. I remember that the hardest was a greased pole that very few could climb. If someone made it to the top, he claimed bragging rights for a long time. We all ate hot dogs and candy and other treats until finally the fires burned down and the light they provided was gone. The party was over for that year.

Grandpa remembers Halloween in Wells, Nevada, where they had an afternoon community party. One year he climbed the greased pole and won $20.00. He and his cousins also won all the foot races that year. Another year the boys in the high school took things from people’s yards all over town and put them on the lawn at the school. He says they stole anything they could find that wasn’t tied down and could be transported in back of a pick up--even an old wrecked car. The next day, the wise principal, instead of getting mad, told the students they had that morning to take everything back. They did.