Boo
Halloween night is creepy and scary

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Local Indian trader Bill Richardson remembers the days when Halloween was the most feared holiday of the year.

Growing up during the Great Depression in Tuba City and Phoenix, Richardson talked about Halloween during his youth.

“No one had any money,” he said, so children going around houses to house with a bag for treats wasn’t happening. Instead, kids would have Halloween parties where the treats were milk and cookies.

But not all the kids in town went to parties, and many celebrated Halloween in their own special way.
“They would tear down everything,” he said.

Vandalism was rampant and Richardson remembers waking up on the day after Halloween and seeing destruction up and down the street.

One popular form of vandalism in those days, he said, was cutting a family’s clothesline — yes, this was the days before washers and dryers. And as he pointed out, repairing clotheslines wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.

By the time local car dealer Pat Gurley was growing up after World War II, things had changed.

People had a little more money, kids seemed to be less prone to tear the town down, and Halloween became a time when today’s tradition of begging kids with bags was born.

Gurley said he remembers being one of these kids, but he also remembers that his father, Claire, had the proper spirit that kids loved on Halloween. Forget the small pieces of linty gum or he crumbled cookies, the Gurley family knew out to treat trick-or-treaters. “He would give each kid a box of Crackerjacks,” Gurley said.
Which may go to explain why Gurley Ford was the top auto dealer in this area for all those years.
Speaking of time, so many of Halloween’s traditions have come and gone.

For example, there was a belief before Richardson’s time that Halloween was a cousin to Valentine’s Day in that someone who was unmarried would be able to look into a mirror on Halloween night and would be able to see the face of their future husband or wife in the mirror or if they were destined to die before marriage, a skull would appear.

Remember those old MGM movies with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, with the teenagers holding parties and bobbing for apples? That’s now unpopular in many areas of the country because people realized that multiple biting of apples in this disease-prone age may spread disease. So now kids just hold a fork over the floating apples and hope that they can just release it and stab an apple.

Halloween parties sometimes even made the news, as you can see by this account in the Oct. 31, 1913, issue of the Gallup Independent.

“The tacky party given by Mrs. J. W. Robertson Thursday evening afforded much fun and amusement. The costumes were decidedly appropriate for the occasion. Mrs. Morris and Mr. Lawrence won the prizes for wearing the most appropriate costumes. Black cats were given the guests with the subject for an impromptu speech.

“Miss Renner won the prize in this contest. The subject was ‘wet feet,’ the prize was a real live black cat. Dummy whist was played and Mrs. Morris and Mr. Quebedeau won the honor prize in this.

“After the game, the guests were led to the dining room and served beans, brown bread, pickles, coffee and pumpkin pie from a tin plate, cup and spoon, after which each one had to wash their own dishes.” But in the last couple of decades some of those old fears from Richardson’s days has returned, but it’s now the parents who are afraid for the safety of their children.

This all began in the 1980s when stories — which some say are urban myths — of someone who hated kids putting a razor blade in apples he gave out on Halloween.

Since then, it’s become common for police departments — including those in this area — to issue a list of warnings to parents. In some areas, hospitals even have allowed parents to bring the candy their children get on Halloween to the hospital so it could be X-rayed for possible razors or other harmful things.

Yes, Halloween is definitely a scary holiday, even without Michael Meyers or that guy in the “Saw” movies.