THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270631
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
My first Halloween ended in a domestic embroilment that was a near wide-awake nightmare.
It was Oct. 31, 1913, and I had just turned four. Outside our house at the corner of Mulberry and Middleton streets in Berkley, neighborhood youngsters - tricked out in hastily improvised costumes, their faces streaked with flour and burnt cork - skittered about like wind-blown autumn leaves under the pale green rays of the swaying street lamp.
The scene was unlike anything I had ever witnessed, and viewing it from an upstairs window with my nose pressed flatly against a window pane, I felt a primeval urge to join in the ritual.
But the eerie joys of Halloween were not for me yet, my mother said. I was too young, she declared emphatically. Thus, I would have to remain a spectator until I was old enough to fend for myself.
Then, miraculously, fate intervened. My mother remembered she needed a dress pattern from my father's sister, who lived half a block away. Bundling me up in my first overcoat - a modified navy pea jacket with a spread eagle embroidered on one sleeve - she sent me to fetch it.
That was all I needed. My mother might be adamant in her refusal to permit me to join in the Halloween fun, but Aunt Emma, whom I still recall lovingly as my all-time favorite relative, was much more understanding. Before I had finished bellyaching about my mother's attitude, she has already begun to devise a plan to circumvent maternal authority.
Rigging me out in one of her boy's pinned-up white flannel nightgowns, an improvised red cambric mask and one of my uncle's cast-off straw boaters, she tucked the pattern into her coat pocket and we sallied forth from the warmth of her stove-heated living room into the eerily illuminated realm of the goblins.
One of Aunt Emma's chief charms was the fact that, like all really worthwhile adults I have ever known, she had never lost contact with the wonderland of childhood. For the next few minutes we reveled in the never-never atmosphere of All Hallows Eve. Then, flushed with excitement, we decided to scare my family.
Sneaking into the front door, we crept up the stairs where my mother had just finished putting my eldest sister - still only a few months removed from babyhood - to bed. Pushing open the door, I ran up to my sister's crib and yelled ``Boo!''
That did it! When she popped open her eyes and saw the strange satanic creature in a rakish hat staring down at her, she let out a blood-curdling wail and went into a fit of hysterics that lasted for over half and hour.
In no time, the house was swarming with angry and excited adults from whose caterwaulings Aunt Emma and I had retreated to the back stairway to get out from underfoot. Finally, when the hastily summoned doctor got ready to leave, he encountered me in the downstairs hall.
``You can shed that get-up now, young man,'' he said with a wink and a grin. ``You've caused enough excitement around here tonight to last for several Halloweens!'' by CNB