A Little Halloween Story

I wrote this memoir a couple of years ago for a Jordan School District inservice writing class.

Countdown to Halloween, 1953

Lordsburg, New Mexico
a memoir

Thursday evening, 22 October: The four of us are in the darkened kitchen surrounding the table. Light from Mrs. Kip’s back porch silhouettes the cut out paper shapes of pumpkins, black cats, and witches taped to the window panes. The table is bedecked with presents and a two layer, home-made chocolate cake covered with dark red-orange frosting, a shade of orange much darker than the one my mother painted the living room last year.

“It complements and sets off the brown and orange pattern in the fabric of my ‘early American’ maple furniture,” she said proudly when I asked why she painted the walls orange. The Winebrenners, who live across the street, came running over thinking the house was on fire the first evening she turned on the lights in her bright, orange living room.

The frosting orange, which she mixed with paste food coloring, is a bit more reddish than real pumpkins, but I think the cake is perfect with a jet-black jack-o-lantern face and six yellow candles on top. I want a cake just like this every year from now on! The light of the candle flames flickers on our faces as I take a huge breath and blow out the pale light plunging us into deep October darkness.

Me and my little sister, Jill.

Thursday evening, 29 October: The Methodist church is having a carnival tonight, so Johnny Winebrenner and I decide to take our Saturday movie money and go. Since Saturday is Halloween, we won’t be going to the show. Our moms expect us home early because we still have school tomorrow. When we arrive at the back door of the church, a costumed lady takes our thirty-five cents and gives us a small bag of candy and ten tickets to use at the booths.

We jumble down the steps to the noisy basement where children are running between the booths yelling, laughing, and sometimes throwing paper at each other. My mother would call it “organized chaos” and avoid it at all costs. The basement has an open central room that amplifies the noise, with six classrooms: three each on two opposite sides where the activities are in full swing. There is a fishing booth, a fortune teller, a cake walk, games with prizes, and a spook alley all decorated with crepe paper streamers.

We skip the fortune teller and try out the cake walk and fish pond a couple of times. We finish at the spook alley where some high school boys tell us we will have to walk through a dark room and put our hands into different bowls that have eyeballs, brains, finger bones, and, they snicker, other body parts. They tell us we will be too chicken to make it through without wetting our pants, and we babies should go find our mommies and head for the fishing booth.

We hand them our tickets anyway, and with maniacal laughs and grimaces they slowly open the door for us. Another boy inside the black room flips on a flashlight and aims the light into our eyes. Then he grabs us and yanks us inside. The door slams shut behind us. Pointing the flashlight beam at the floor, the boy guides us to the tables and tells us in a ghoulish voice what is supposed to be in each bowl. After putting our hands in bowls of pealed grapes, cooked macaroni, gelatin, pumpkin guts and seeds, boiled eggs and other things we can’t identify, we are brusquely ushered out of the room. Our hands are wet and sticky.

Johnny Winebrenner, Jill and me.

Friday evening, 30 October: We are sitting in the pumpkin colored living room when we smell a noxious odor like something burning. My mother runs into the kitchen to see if she left something on the stove. We troop in after her. The smell is stronger here, but there is nothing burning in the kitchen. There is a flickering glow out the back window, and we rush to the window afraid the old barn is on fire.

Our eyes meet the glowering jack-o-lantern face of a huge pumpkin impaled on the corner fence post by the back gate. Thick, acrid smoke from burning pumpkin and smoldering manure is billowing out the top. My father starts laughing and says it must be a “gift” from the boys on his high school football team.
Halloween evening: We have hamburgers over at Winebrenners as we usually do on Saturdays, but we don’t stay to watch television; they have one, we don’t. Rin Tin Tin will have to wait till next week. Trick-or-treating rules tonight, and Johnny and I have to get into our costumes. He is going to be a cowboy, and I am going as the headless horseman. The headless, horseless horseman my father says.

I am wearing a large coat buttoned up over my head and carrying a jack-o-lantern carved pumpkin as my lost head. I use the pumpkin as my candy holder because I can’t manage to hold a sack and carry the pumpkin at the same time. I meet the cowboy on the street, and we start our rounds.

As we gather loot, the heavy pumpkin becomes harder to carry. When I put it down and reach in to try a sample, my hand finds the candy covered with slimy pumpkin sweat. No one thought to put a lining inside the pumpkin. We lug the pumpkin back to my house to see if we can save some of the treats. My mother says she can wash the candy bars, but the cookies, popcorn balls and the loosely wrapped candy are ruined.

It is not too late to go back out, but I don’t have a head now. My mother paints my face with makeup and pushes one of my father’s old hats down on my head.

“There,” she says, “no one will know you’ve been there already.” Then she paints a Lone Ranger mask on Johnny, puts a different bandana around his neck, and sends us out the door again.

After an hour, we head back home with our paper bags heavy with Halloween treasure. Too late to avoid them, we see five big high school boys shambling down the sidewalk toward us. They look like giants to us in their boots, blue jeans, white tee shirts, and letterman jackets. They are smoking. A couple of them are not too steady on their feet. When they see us; they stop. We stop.

“Hey, looks like you two made out like bandits,” says one of them as he flicks his cigarette into the street and ambles over to us. “Show us whatcha got.”

He leans down toward us. We back up and tighten our grips around the bags.

“Just give us a look,” he says, while the rest of the boys encircle us so we can’t escape. One of them looks a bit like Johnny’s high-school-football-playing brother, but maybe not. Anyway, he doesn’t seem to recognize us, so it must not be him.

Johnny and I slowly open the bags and hold them out so the guy doing the talking can look into them.

“Share?” he asks nicely.

“OK,” I say hesitantly, and before we can react, he grabs both bags and tosses them to his buddies who burst out laughing and howling.

“Thanks, suckers!” He pushes between us and punches one of his friends playfully on the shoulder. The big men continue their shamble down the street jostling each other, laughing, and eating our candy. “Couple a looosers,” laughs one of them as they turn the corner.

We just stand there, Johnny and I, two little six-year-olds in the dark of the last night of October, 1953.

Part One:
Today is, as everyone seems duty bound to say, an historic day in the history of the United States: the inauguration of the first black President of the United States of America. Only time will show whether it is a great day or a tragic day for the country. I am not against having a black man, or woman (black or white) for that matter, as President: I am just not convinced this is the right one. There are several conservative black men whom I highly respect, and for whom I would have voted without hesitation. They have economic and political knowledge and expertise far beyond the "hope and change" rhetoric of Mr. Obama, but are not politicians, have no political machine, and could never be elected.

I hope that President Obama takes a more moderate road than the one on which he campaigned and that he will eschew the radical, far-left, socialist agenda of some of his biggest monetary supporters. I sincerely hope he will reflect deeply on the oath of his office: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."(Article II, Section 1., paragrph 7); and not try to reinterpret the Constitution by executive order or by further encouraging activist judges. I am hopeful but worried, having read many of his statements about the Constitution.

Part Two:
Here is another memoir. Background: In February, 1967, I left home as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At that time missionaries spent a week in Salt Lake City for general training and instruction before leaving for the mission field. Those who were going to non-English speaking missions were sent to Provo to learn the basics of the languages they would be speaking. There was no Missionary Training Center then: language missionaries were housed in different dormatories on the BYU campus or around Provo. I was to learn Spanish, so I was sent to Knight-Mangum Hall on campus with my companion, Elder Barker.

The Smack Heard ‘Round the World
By Michael L. Goodman

I deliberately throw back the covers, swing my feet out of bed, and slowly sit up. The pain in my chest throbs with each heart beat. The narcotic pain pill isn’t working: I feel like death warmed over, but I know exactly what I am going to do in the next thirty seconds.
I have been at Knight-Mangum Hall, the Spanish language missionary training facility on the BYU campus, for two months. Actually, two and a half weeks of that time I have spent across the street in the campus medical center suffering with a viral heart infection. My companion, Elder Barker, and I had occupied the room on the southeast corner of the fourth floor all by ourselves until the week I had my “heart attack.” That week two new greenies were assigned to our room, and we lost the convenient storage space of the empty bunk beds by the door. I remember Elder Evans’ name only because of what happens this evening.
Elder Barker and the greenies have gone down to the showers at the other end of the hall. I have turned out the lights and eased into bed after taking my pain pill. As I lie here in the soothing dark solitude wishing I were home, a rumble of voices, banging doors, shouts, laughter, and running foot-falls begins to swell in the hall. A shaving cream fight has erupted down by the showers, probably instigated by fun-loving Elder Barker, and is rolling through the hall sucking missionaries out of their rooms to join the melee.
Into the room burst the greenies; on go the lights! They are giggling and jostling and punching each other while rummaging through their things searching for ammunition. They don’t hear me asking them to be quiet or to turn off the lights as they fling themselves back into the battle. The door is open. The lights are on.
Knowing that they are just going to come back anyway, I foolishly pull myself out of bed, shut the door, and turn off the lights. I am tempted to take another pill. Happily, the noise level ebbs somewhat as the action flows back to the far end of the hall and the showers.
A few minutes after I am back in bed, the noise level drops significantly. There is only the thump of running feet and quickly slammed doors and anxious, hushed voices admonishing, “Hurry!” Move!” “Go!” The zone leaders from three floors down must have come up to investigate the commotion, and the combatants are beating a hasty retreat.
The lights flash on as the greenies rush into the room, flushed, giggling, and too doped on adrenaline to be quiet or ready to sleep. They hop into their bunks, chatting and recounting the whole history of the whom and the what and the when and the where of the great shaving cream war.
I ask them again to be quiet. “Please,” I implore, “I am still sick. I’m exhausted, and I need some sleep. Please turn off the light and go to sleep.”
Elder Evans on the top bunk, rises up on his elbow, smirks at me and then says with a simpering tone and sarcastic smile, “Tuck us in and give us a kiss, MOTHER.”
His smirky smile vanishes when he sees me throw off the covers and sit up in bed. He cowers back slightly as I approach. His eyebrows rise as his eyes enlarge. He thinks I am going to hit him. But I am not going to hit him. I deliberately take his head between my hands and plant the biggest, loudest smack of a kiss I am able to pucker upon his hot, flushed cheek.
“Now,” I say through a tooth-clenched smile, enunciating each word, “be-quiet-and-go-to-sleep.”
Without taking my eyes off his horrified face, my hand slaps the light switch by the door, and the room is plunged into dark, terrified silence. Shuffling back to my bed, I clasp my hand over my mouth to stifle a chortle. Didn’t think I’d do that, did you, Elder. Well, now you know. Don’t mess with Goodman.
When Elder Barker finally returns, he is greeted by a stereophonic “Shhhhh” from the greenies’ bunks and an urgently whispered, “Don’t make any noise.”
I smile off to sleep.

For the last three years, I have been writing memoir pieces an in-service writing class sponsored through the Jordan School District. I started the class as a way to practice and improve my writing skills while, at the same time, putting my life history on paper for my children. But I found memoir to be a different style of writing about life experiences, a very different discipline than simply writing a chronological life history. I have certainly found the struggle of memoir writing to be a life experience in and of itself.
For everyone, even we unimportant people, there are hundreds of fascinating stories from and about life that, if well told, are interesting to one's family and friends. I strive to write a letter to my family and friends monthly, and I include a piece of memoir with it. My ninety-year-old mother-in-law is my biggest fan.
I am going to post on this blog some past memoir pieces that I have revised many times, and I hope that they are in their final form. By posting, they will be electronically "out there" in the ether somewhere forever. So here goes the first post.

At The Wall
Michael L. Goodman

It was a physically stressing position, leaning into the polished, black granite wall trying to hold the strip of newsprint with one hand snug against the third name from the bottom of the panel and rubbing the graphite pencil over the incised letters with the other hand. I could feel my face reddening with the strain of holding my body at that awkward angle. My eyes teared with a flood of sorrow, regret, anger, and maybe a twinge of survivor’s guilt as the W-A-R-R-E-N appeared on the paper. The paper shifted slightly as I rubbed the pencil over the G, but I finished the name even though it was crooked.
I took the second strip of paper and smoothed it over the letters, but this time I held the strip on the left side with my knee giving me a free hand to hold the paper straight as I rubbed over the letters again.
When I stood, my legs were a little unstable, my face was flushed, my eyes were wet, and my breathing was shallow. Looking at my reflection in the black, mirror-like stone of the wall, I took a couple of deep breaths and steadied myself. Backing away from the panel, I almost bumped into a man who had been watching me; watching me and the dozens of others along the angling gash in the grassy slope on the north side of Constitution Gardens.
“Oh, excuse me,” I stammered as our eyes met.
“No harm done,” he said with a mild British accent. He was about my height, a few years older, but thinner. He wore a brown plaid shirt, a light tan blazer, blue jeans, and a bemused smile that was very close to a smirk. “Tell me,” he said, glancing leisurely left and right along the 54,000 names. “I don’t quite understand. What does all this mean to Americans?”
Looking at him with my mouth open, I couldn’t even explain what it all meant to me, or what I was feeling at that moment let alone what all this means to millions of other “Americans.” How do you give an answer that covers ten years of friendship with the very first kid you met when you moved to California: or guilt at not having time to talk the last time you saw him when he came by the house to say good bye; or unspeakable grief standing by an ugly, black gash in the cemetery grass on a beautiful hill above San Diego Bay; or the vague thought that your name could be on that wall if an ulcer the size of a small bullet-hole in your gut hadn’t been enough for a jocular corporal to stamp your selective service papers with a 4F? How do you meaningfully answer “What does all this mean?”?
“I can’t say. I don’t know,” I said haltingly, with my pencil in one hand and two WARREN GUTHRIE HARDING rubbings, reverently held in the other, fluttering slightly as the afternoon cooled. “There’s no easy answer.”
“Hmmmm,” he said, frowning at me like a tourist disappointed with his tour guide. Losing interest, he pivoted smartly to the left and ambled down along the wall shaking his head.
Turning to the wall, I had one last, long look at myself reflected among the names; one last, lingering touch of the incised letters; one last, wavering breath and sigh before returning to the top of the slope and my patient wife.