Small town Halloween

I was chatting with an old friend from Kingman on Facebook yesterday and she reminded me of memories I had forgotten (blocked out?) especially about Halloween. Halloween was so much fun back then especially if you lived in a small Midwest town. The businessmen of Kingman had a costume parade with prizes and everybody and their dog came to town for that event. There were booths with candy apples, popcorn, apple cider, several games, and candy....all free. Even Main Street was closed for the celebration. OK, we can all agree that was a fun night we all looked forward to but my favorite Halloween memories are the nights we 'freelanced' so to speak. My friend who shall remain nameless (Gail Page Clingan) and I decided we were too old (and we were) to trick or treat but we weren't too old to throw corn and soap windows. We also weren't too bright. Mary Johnson was one of our favorite teachers but boy howdy was she strict! She treated us all like her own children and if we needed a not so gentle reminder we were acting like uneducated buffoons..her words not mine, then she let us know, no matter where we were. School, church, post office, Cliff & Cleo's, no place was safe. However, she was also just as generous with her hugs. She seemed to know when someone was struggling with a problem at home, school or just needed a little extra attention. So who do Page and I decide to target? Well, Mrs. Johnson of course. For those of you who are not familiar with 'corning' it is a Midwest tradition of throwing handfuls of shelled field corn at a house window or a moving vehicle. I have been on the receiving end of 'corning' almost as many times as I have corned and I can testify that the sound shelled seed corn makes when it hits a moving car window or the window behind your head when you are sitting on the couch minding your own business and watching Twilight Zone is a sound you won't soon forget. So Page and I have a bag of corn in one hand and a bar of soap in the other and start strolling towards the Johnson's. The closer we got the slower we strolled. We decided she would probably run out the front door and catch us if we corned her so we decided soaping was our best option. We crept up to the living room windows on the West side of the house not making a sound. We even managed to work our way through the holly bushes with a minimum of rustling, scratches and giggling. We were crouched under the window, fingertips on the sill and slowly raising up to window height. No lights on in the living room...whew. Just as we raised our bar of Ivory we both saw a tuft of white hair and very angry eyes looking straight at us through the window and not 3 inches away from our noses. Let's just say Page and I almost killed each other getting away from that window and back through those bushes. I swear my heart was about to pound right out of my chest. And that my friends is the night I thought I was going to meet Jesus.