Ghosts, goblins and Halloween memories
Connie’s Corner
I enjoyed the recent Fall Festival hosted by Navasota’s First Presbyterian Church. It was a first for the church, just as their monthlong pumpkin patch is a first for Navasota, and it made me nostalgic for the Helms Elementary Halloween Carnivals I went to growing up in Houston. Halloween Carnivals went by the wayside by the time my children started school in 1972. I’m not sure why – more working mothers, changes in education, the Vietnam War? But Halloween trick or treating certainly changed forever in 1974 after Ronald Clark O’Bryan, aka the Houston Candy Man, poisoned his own 8-year old son Timothy with cyanide to collect the insurance money. There has to be a special place in hell for parents like Clark!
But back to my kinder, gentler Halloween. Helms Elementary went all-out and even though it was 65-70 years ago, I still remember the excitement of it all - the brightly decorated rooms and hallways packed with moms and dads being pulled by fairy princesses, cowboys and some rather short ghosts and skeletons from classroom to classroom. Each room had something different to offer, for instance, the Country Store. For as long as I can remember, my mother held on to a cheap ceramic something-or-other I bought for her at one of those long ago carnivals.
Several classrooms hosted games which appealed to a variety of pint-sized skill levels - the fishing game was my favorite! Others featured baked goods for sale or apple bobbing, and then the most frighteningly wonderful, the haunted house! Our library and Mrs. Sweat’s classroom on the second floor were converted to what I remember as a very scary chamber of horrors, 1950s style horrors of course, and probably very tame by today’s standards. You see, our school Halloween Carnivals were truly a family and community supported affair – even my dad went and he didn’t attend many events during my childhood In the aftermath of that horrific 1974 Halloween, churches, cities and towns responded by providing safe places for children to trick or treat and the events often became less of a Halloween Carnival and more of a Fall Festival. Speaking with prejudice, I don’t think even the best planned event can match the Halloween Carnival of my childhood but it’s all in your perspective. The planners of today are creating memories which will be remembered 50, 60 or even 70 years from now. So, I say good on them!
I think it just might be time to light a pumpkin spice candle, sit back and go where my memory leads me. After all, as American author of science fiction and horror Dan Simmons wrote, “When we are old and failing, it is the memories of childhood which can be summoned most clearly.”
The column represents the thoughts and opinions of Connie Clements. Opinion columns are NOT the opinion of the Navasota Examiner.
Clements is a freelance reporter for the Navasota Examiner and an award-winning columnist.