Mom annotated that this was in the Hofeldt's garage, and it might have been. She's in the lame dress. Louise is the one in the headgear. Georgann is sitting at the table with her hand raised. I cannot find myself, but I am almost certain I am in the rabbit mask. Sylvia Tipton is the mom dressed as a pirate.
Halloween was my next favorite holiday to Christmas. Our neighbors were always generous with the candy. Mom usually made marshmallow Rice Crispy squares. For several years in the mid-1950's, we could fill up our bags and have to head home, dump them out, and then start out once again. Parents never had to accompany us because the neighborhood was safe and everyone knew one another.
One year, near Halloween, we were standing on the Hofeldt's front porch. From the direction of the Tipton's house, though we did not see exactly where, a tall ghostly figure, entirely wrapped in a white sheet came running toward us. We weren't frightened so much as in awe. It appeared so quickly, rushed at us but turned away at the last moment, and then ran back from whence it came, again in the direction of the Tiptons. We were so startled that we failed to give chase immediately. When we finally did, the draped figure disappeared down the driveway and then behind the Tipton's house. When we got to their backyard, only Tom and Sylvia were there, calmly working in their garden, behind the garage.
We excitedly explained what we had seen and did they catch sight of the ghost? "No," they innocently explained. They had not seen anything unusual. However, we ought to have realized instantly that it was Tom Tipton, who was on the Whittier police force. He was a tall man, just like the ghost. Besides, it was well past dark. Why would anyone be working in their garden after dark, with so little light to see by? I suspect he must have tossed the sheet over the back wall before we arrived. Regardless, it was one of those remarkable, if unexplainable, events that took place in our neighborhood around Halloween.
At school the teachers decorated the classrooms for the holiday. And on that day or the nearest school day before Halloween, all the students dressed in costume and paraded from one classroom to another to show off. One student one year dared me to join him in protest by not wearing a costume. We were too old for that sort of thing, he insisted. However, I chickened out and arrived at the bus stop in my rabbit costume that morning. He shamed me into going back home and taking it off and putting on my regular jeans and shirt. Later that day we rebels without much of a cause hiked from classroom to classroom without a costume. There weren't many of us similarly rebellious that day, and it all seemed rather silly.
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