Hallow Eve by Barbara H.

              Halloween is a silly, fun, and exciting Autumn experience that even "old kids" can share. Kids dressed in costume going from house to house crying "trick or treat" and receiving some special treat for their effort is a generational memory.

              My own childhood Halloween was spent in a small home town where every family knew every other family and we were all everybody elses responsibility.

The older kids would gather the brothers and sisters in groups and we would travel up and down every street and avenue until our bags were so full of candy and treats that we were hardly  able to carry them anymore and finally we headed home.

The next part of the fun was dumping the contents of those bags on the kitchen table and separating all the candy into bars and lollipops and bubble gum.That's where my mom Helen entered the picture.

Mom loved bubble gum and we knew it. We piled all of our FLEERS DUBBLE BUBBLE GUM booty on a section of the table and watched as she gathered it into her apron pocket, then chewed some and showed off her expertise at blowing some of the biggest bubbles we ever saw!!! She even let us break some of the biggest ones and then started chewing as fast as she could to show off some more.

That habit carried over through the years until I had my own children and the grandchildren were gifted with grandma's bubbles if they shared their Halloween hauls with her and they did. And so it went on and on.

I wrote a poem about Halloween  when I was a young mom. It was dated 1964.

                                         Hallow Eve

                                 by Barbara H. Powell/Horter

The air is pungent with the smell

of burning leaves

And clear, cold air.

And on it rests

The spell of Hallow Eve.

Tonight's world is for us

A globe of crystal

Cold and bright

And dark and full of stars

.......and children's laughter.

I find myself caught up

In the joy of youth again.

I feel the soft, warm, mittened-hand

In mine

And thrill in the presence

of three upturned faces

as we trod along keeping paces

with the night

......and the call of Trick or Treat.

This, another Hallow Eve, belongs to them

And in part to me.

In memory of not long ago,

When in costume, I would go,

As they go now, from door to door

The magic spell will last one night.

But I'll remember if I might

All the many others.