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Believe it or not, it’s already October! Is it just me or have you noticed this year passed by even faster than last year? I hope you and your family have enjoyed this, year in spite of the presence of many trying factors. This month we usually think about fairs, harvests, pumpkins and Halloween. I read that county and state fairs are growing smaller with each passing year because the independent farmers are being pushed out of business by modern agri-conglomerates. The celebration of the harvest is less recognized, in our heartland, because of the very same reason. On a brighter note, I also read that the largest pumpkin, grown in America this year, weighed 1500 pounds. By the way, it was grown by a family farmer. At least that’s one thing to celebrate this October!
Next comes Halloween…a day we celebrate with candy, costumes, and trick-or-treating. My favorite part of Halloween is carving those funny faces in our pumpkins. Next, I most enjoy eating all that pumpkin pie. Of course, another part of the celebration are the vampires, ghosts, witches and all such scary things. From the time I was a kid, I always wondered where this Halloween business all started. Most of us, in America, didn’t know anything about this ancient custom until the potato famine forced about 250,000 Irish citizens to move to this country, between 1840 and 1880. I don’t really know when the Irish started to celebrate Halloween, but it must have come from an ancient Celtic tradition. The poor Irish children would go to the estates of the more affluent families asking for candies and cakes in exchange for a promise that, on All Souls Saints, the children would pray for the affluent families’ continued success.
As the tradition gradually evolved into a cherished occasion in America, we took the celebration and the costumes to a whole new level. As a child, growing up in the South, I loved Halloween. And there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for a bag of candy. I don’t think I ever believed in zombies, vampire, witches or devils, but I vividly remember the night I started believing in ghosts! Let me tell you about it. It was on the Halloween of my eleventh year. My family was living in Kingstree, South Carolina. The guys in the neighborhood decided to dress up and go trick-or-treating together. We wanted to start out early, and stay out as late as we possibly could. We worked our way through the three largest neighborhoods. And that turned out to be about four hours worth of trick-or-treating. By that time, it was close to nine o’clock so we started for home. After walking for a while we sat down, to take a candy break, in front of an old house built in the early 1700’s. Everyone dumped their booty on the ground for a close inspection of what we’d collected. I sat separately and divided up my candy into two piles: the candy I liked, and the pieces I’d later trade. I placed the candy I liked on my right side and then I gave into the temptation of eating a Three Musketeers’ bar. But, when I reached for it, it was gone.
I couldn’t understand what had happened to it since none of my friends were sitting anywhere near me. As I looked behind me for the candy bar, I spied the boots of what turned out to be a tall, grown man dressed in what appeared to be a military uniform. I did not recognize his style of dress so I studied him in great detail: his helmet, his boots, the cut of his coat, his powder horn and his bayonet case. I wondered if he’d just dressed like this just for Halloween or if he was he a guard or caretaker for this old house? With that thought, I became afraid that maybe my friends and I were trespassing. I waited a moment for this man to say something to us, but he did not. Instead, to my utter surprise, he slowly faded into a mist - disappearing right before my eyes - and I never found my Three Musketeers’ bar!
Later, I learned that the old house, I’d been sitting in front of, was the location of a major battle between the South Carolina militia and the British, during the Revolutionary War. I also learned later that the uniform my ghost wore was the exact same dress as that worn by the 1778 South Carolina militia. To this day, I have no idea where my other-worldly friend came from or went. But from that day forward I believed in ghosts. And from that Halloween on, I always ate my Three Musketeers’ candy bar first!
Enjoy your Halloween! Please tell a friend about Kinetics, and be blessed. Dannion |
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