Masquerade parties of yesteryear were but one of the memories that surface all month in October. No matter where you turned, signs appeared to announce the advent of Halloween at month’s end. Dad always teasingly claimed to celebrate Mom’s birthday on Halloween, though her birth fell on the 30th, not the 31st.
Sunday School classes held hay rides culminating in a party. Everyone arrived in homemade disguises. Few actually paid good hard-earned dollars for full costumes back then. A sheet with holes had been saved over many years for one of our family to use. Mom’s fur coat always went with the wolf’s mask. Then, masks were made from woven and hardened cloth. Hobo’s were always a favorite costume.
Pumpkins, Indian corn, corn stalks, dry leaves, bittersweet, and gourds adorned home displays topped with webs made of kite string. Bats and moons cut from construction paper dangled from lamp shades. Candy corn ruled the roost for most-often-purchased holiday fare. Pumpkin spice marketing on everything had not emerged anywhere on Earth.
October meant learning the verse, “In 14 hundred and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had 3 ships and left from Spain…” The rest was lost over decades since elementary school, but the names of those ships, Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, remained locked into brain cells. Columbus was celebrated in school on October 12.
Angelkeep considered using Columbus Day as Christmas tree decorating day. More traditionally at Angelkeep that occurred on Halloween. Tree decorating accompanied the season’s first batch of party mix.
The government found need of reorganizing Columbus history as taught in the fifties. Actually it began in 1937. Forty years later the sacred date was ditched in favor of October’s second Monday.
In 1929 the banks closed for what was then called Discovery Day. Little did they know then that they were but two weeks away from the famous stock market Crash of ’29. It was the original Black Friday but its outcome a reverse to economics. In 1929 Black Thursday struck on October 24, followed by Black Tuesday. Then came the Great Depression.
Black cats, black bats, and black spiders eventually became a traditional part of October’s Halloween Day, but were unrelated to the crash.
Angelkeep tended to mix up the holidays in October. Gwen’s special recipe of a crust-less pumpkin pie soon appeared in the oven. Elsewhere October came around and the world began talking about pumpkin spice in everything. Chopped pecans or English walnuts appeared on the top of Gwen’s dish with large dollops of Cool Whip placed on a chunk in a bowl. It mimicked Casper the Friendly Ghost. Or appeared like one of the Daugherty children robed in the family white ghost sheet with the two eye holes for each Halloween party.
Pie pumpkins appearing in the grocery in October were purchased and baked. Sometimes an added squash made for variety. Angelkeep’s refrigerator held a constant supply of baked pie pumpkin to be eaten straight. No pie. No crust, just pumpkin with a bit of butter. For a special treat a bit of brown sugar might be added. Or BBQ sauce.
Angelkeep’s October candy delights evolved over the years. Childhood desire for bags of candy converted to special healthy foods of autumn. Retained were special Halloween candy delights like candy corn. It’s mixed three to four times the volume with Spanish peanuts. Any nuts will do, but the hard-to-find Spanish peanuts with skins yet attached are best. It added to the October celebration of Columbus discovering the Indigenous, as some prefer records to show.
Chocolate was not omitted. It usually arrived in the form of M&M’s Peanut, as soon as the variety appeared in the special holiday packs of orange and black colors.
Orange pumpkins appeared. The large maple tree out the kitchen window converted in October to orange leaves that looked like a pumpkin on a stick. The first batch of Christmas party mix joined the orange color spirit. Added to a batch of cheddar cheese party mix was a full bag of Snyder’s cheddar cheese pretzels, Cheetos crunchy puffs, jumbo cashews, extra cheddar Goldfish crackers, spicy Cheese-It Crackers, and caramel corn.
This mix ended up appropriately orange colored for all of October, to Halloween, and through to Thanksgiving.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
