These two vintage Halloween illustrations make me chuckle. Happy Halloween!
courtesy of happyhalloween.com
Hee,hee,hee…
Oh, the Irony!
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A Late Autumn Photo Diary
Driving down my street this morning
Many people around me complain about living in upstate New York because of the long, hard winters (and I’m not arguing with them – they can be long and hard). But there is also so much to enjoy in every season. I’m always amazed at the beauty and variety of Mother Nature and thankful to live where I do to see all the different “moods” she wears.
This is going to a kind of “picture diary” of my drive into work, with glimpses of sights along the way (I was actually running early for once and so I could safely stop and take a few snaps as I went). 🙂
So the pic above is just after I turned out of my driveway…beautiful mist and golden-russet leaves strewn across the gray pavement…
Swampy marsh
Next up, around 15 minutes into my drive…an atmospheric marsh with the sun coming up behind it. Sometimes I see Blue Heron flying in or out of it, and it’s got that sort of “gothic” feeling so lovely for this time of year, with the fog sometimes rising from the water and the black tree branches reaching into the sky.
A few minutes later, I enjoyed this pretty scene.
field mostly in the dark, still, with the sun just peeking over the horizon
field in the rising sun, backed by blue sky and lacy clouds
The fields were still shrouded in dark and then the sun came fully above the horizon and colors appeared…frosted grasses, brown branches, and a few trees still decked out in their autumn glory.
Frosty cornfield
On the way down the big hill into the valley where my school is, there’s a cornfield. Even the muddy, rutted area where the stalks have already been cut is made beautiful by the gilding of frost, so that it almost shines in the rising sun.
An Amish home
Stacked harvest of corn stalks
Lastly, there is an Amish community in the area, and their houses are all white and glowing in the misty morn.
The field across the road from this home is prepared for winter in the old-fashioned way, with the corn stalks harvested and placed “haystack” style. A picturesque and beautiful scene.
Mother Nature continually amazes me as she shifts and changes, attiring herself in her new wardrobe each season and slowly but surely adding tried and true “pieces” to her ensemble. First the shock of colors heralded her shift into autumn, and now the gilding of frost is her way of flirting with the garments of snow she’ll wear in another month or two.
I look forward to the transition. What’s Mother Nature doing (and looking like) where you are?
Weaving Dreams
Mist-cloaked autumn field and trees
“We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.”
~ Edgar Allan Poe
Hubknuckles
A sweet book from a simpler time
When they were in elementary school, this was a favorite book for both my girls, especially around this time of year. It has some lovely black and white, soft-edged illustrations by Deborah Kogan Ray, and it was originally published in 1985, purporting to be based upon a slightly spooky but also sweet and ultimately positive experience had by the author, Emily Herman, when she was little.
My younger daughter so enjoyed the details and descriptions in the story, that from the very first time I read it to her, she begged for us to have “spaghetti and meatballs” for supper that Halloween, since that’s what the narrator and her family have in the story on that night.
We’ve been having spaghetti and meatballs for Halloween supper ever since. 🙂
Here’s the book’s description:
“Every Halloween, Hubknuckles pays a visit to Lee and her younger sisters and baby brother. The children watch the ghostly figure from the safety of their warm kitchen, experiencing delicious little tickles of fear.
But this year, Lee has decided that Hubknuckles isn’t real. “Hubknuckles is just a sheet and a flashlight,” she tells her sisters. “Either Ma or Pa makes him dance.” And she is determined to prove it.
What Lee discovers after an eerie dance on the lawn with her silent, shadowy partner is sure to delight young readers, who will be enchanted by the softly glowing illustrations of this unusual Halloween happening.”
I recommend it highly if you have or know of young children who enjoy reading or being read to, say from kindergarten age to age 9 or so. It remains one of my older daughter’s favorite stories. And my younger daughter, who is a decade older than she was on that long-ago Halloween when we first read Hubknuckles together, is now an avid reader in own right, in large part due to the way books like it triggered her imagination. This story is available for kindle or in hardcover (though the link I’ve provided in the title here leads to the hardcover version at amazon.com).
One of the things I miss, now that my girls are no longer so little, is the loss of those opportunities to read to them like I used to. Seeing this book brings back many happy memories of times together, snuggled up and enjoying a good tale. But I’ve ordered copies for both of them, so they maybe they will be able to recreate that magic when they read it to their children one day.
Halloween, 1970’s Style
At the Homestead, circa 1975
So, I was going through some old photos recently and stumbled upon this photo – one of the few I have of the epic Halloween parties we used to have when I was in elementary school.
Everyone is sitting around the big kitchen table at the Homestead, chowing down on the homemade pizza, cupcakes and popcorn, along with bowls of chips and corn curls, all while dressed in their costumes.
One of the cool things about this picture to me is that none of the people sitting around the table are me or members of my family: They’re all friends from school or up the road.
See, this was the only occasion all year when I and my two closest-in-age sisters (who were the only ones young enough to have this kind of party, still, since we were the youngest three of the seven girls) could invite several friends each to the house for a “big blow-out” party. Oh, we had friends over all the time, and there was always enough food for another three or four plates, but this was one time when we could have up to 14-15 guests AT ONCE. It was an event planned by us and anticipated by our friends all year.
Most of our friends lived in the small city nearby, where our schools were. We were in the country, and that made a huge difference for a Halloween celebration, much of which could still take place outside, in beautiful mid-October weather.
We’d set up a “Haunted House” in the one-room camp that Pa had built years before out in the woods behind the garage, and some of my older sisters would “man” it. Big, black tarps were strung throughout to make “rooms” and in each room was a different “spooky” tableau…some with moving characters who would jump and frighten those touring it.
We’d have games, like “Guess the object” where the players had their eyes blindfolded and had to guess what was in the bowls…peeled warm grapes for eyeballs, a turned out jello-mold for brains, warmed pasta with sauce for “guts” – you get the idea) 🙂 Of course we’d also play “kick-the-can” and other running-around-in-the-yard-and-woods kind of games. Loads of fun.
It was a great opportunity to be creative, in this simpler time before technology and our addiction to it made everything more accessible and therefore less mysterious and exciting.
Me in the costume my mother made me to be a “Scheherazade”-type princess
One of my sisters as an “Executioner”, complete with a “bloody” axe with which she cut off my head, LOL
I never realized how much work it must have been for Ma, though, preparing all that food. And of course, we almost always had homemade costumes, not just because they were “cooler” than anything we could find in the store, but also, I learned later, because they were more economical. My parents were frugal in all the right ways, so that I never experienced a sense of “want” other than the healthy kind. 🙂
It was an innocent time filled with great memories, when Halloween was centered on fun instead of “evil” connotations, and living in the country made for some rousing good times.
Anyone else have any memories of old time Halloweens to share? Please do in the comments!
Don’t Give Up
The final flower in my garden, persisting through fallen leaves and frosty mornings…
“The flower that follows the sun does so even on cloudy days.”
~Robert Leighton
An Oasis of Tradition (and some Cathartic Pumpkin Carving!)
Courtesy of escapeadulthood.com
So this isn’t a generic pumpkin-carving post. It’s about how carving pumpkins, in additional to being entertaining and leading to some pretty cool jack-o-lanterns, can be cathartic too.
Ma, enjoying the process of carving out her pumpkin’s eye, LOL
Consider this picture of my dear, very sweet, normally-without-a-violent-bone-in-her-body mother about twenty years ago, when we were carving pumpkins out in the back yard. She’s having a good time carving her pumpkin’s face…and maybe getting out a little aggression too, LOL. My father is clearly enjoying the moment, too.
Me and Pa another year, with finished pumpkins on the front steps
Year after year, we’d all have a good time, and it’s an example of the kind of fun I’ve tried to create with my own kids as the years have passed.
Traditions are important. They provide a little bit of something to count on, year to year, when the landscape and the world keeps changing around us (as it inevitably does). We have these moments to recreate and fall back on, to re-center ourselves, bring us back to our roots, and reclaim a little of all the different times in our lives that we participated in them.
Of course traditions come in all forms, whether for other holidays, birthdays, or just things like apple-picking or preparing favorite recipes. Sometimes they are the bridge between people who have drifted apart, giving them a reason to reconnect.
Me around 25 years ago, sitting on the top of the “school bus shelter” Pa built at the bottom of the driveway, kept company by a giant pumpkin and the little orange cat my parents took in
I love traditions, and I’ll probably be writing more about them – at least the ones I’ve cherished – in the future. But for now, since we’re at the end of October, I’ll stick with this one. Although time marches on, our traditions only have to disappear or change if we want them to.
What are some of your favorite autumn traditions, whether for Halloween or not?
The Comfort (and Power) of Books…
Contemplating, reading, imagining, and living various lives through the pages of books as verbalized by some notable authors…accompanied by lovely illustrations by the incomparable Norman Rockwell. What could be better on a cool autumn evening? I think I’ll light a few candles, brew a hot cup of tea, and do some reading myself…
Boy Reading of Adventure by Norman Rockwell
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. ~Oscar Wilde
Boy Reading from 1920 GE ad by Norman Rockwell
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~Mark Twain
Most Beloved American Writer by Normal Rockwell
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. ~Thomas Carlyle
Books are one of the great loves of my life, first introduced to me at the knee of my mother and father, as they read to me day after day, and then serving as a faithful comfort in times of joy, turmoil, happiness and distress. They whisk me to other times and places and allow me to live vicariously through the characters and places they inhabit. It’s the only form of time-travel accessible on a regular basis (for all our interest in the activity as espoused by shows like Dr. Who and Outlander) How about you? Do books hold a special place in your life? Any favorite titles?
Grandpa’s Crows
Crow in the tree at the cemetery
Well, technically for me, they’re “Pa’s” crows, because the man whose crows are the subject of this post is my father…but my kids and the other grandkids (and there are a lot of them…I’m one of seven girls, and we each have between one and four kids of our own) got used to calling them Grandpa’s crows.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it seems to me that crows get a bad name. They’re often associated with death or darkness, they’re maligned for having one of the least pleasant voices of the bird kingdom, and many people consider them pests. But they hold a very special place in my heart, for a variety of reasons, most of them tied to my father, otherwise known to our family as “Pa”. Continue Reading…
The Pumpkin Farm Stand
Pumpkin farm stand on a gray autumn day
“No Spring, nor Summer beauty
hath such grace
As I have seen
in one Autumnal face.”
~John Donne
Beautiful colors of pumpkin to choose from this year…we picked a couple of larger, dark orange pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns, and I chose several of the smaller ones with interesting hues for our front steps.
With (American)Thanksgiving in November, we get lots of enjoyment (and decorating power!) out of the pumpkins…and as you can see from the photo, they are reasonably-priced. Even the big orange ones along the top were only $5.00.
Anyone else love visiting the pumpkin farm (or autumn stand?) I love seeing pictures of all the different ways the produce and items are displayed. Even with the season winding down, there is still so much to see and enjoy, and Nature sheds her colors in preparation for her long Winter’s sleep.
M. Reed McCall, Author 