I am going to take you back a few years to a time that although may not have been all that simple and easy going at least it certainly seems so in this old man's mind. The year was 1958 and I was eight years old. My family and I lived in the small Illinois' town of Hampton on the banks of the Mississippi River. We only lived in this village for less than two years, but those few months were apparently very impressionable as my ages of seven to nine years in this life are vividly, and most often fondly, remembered. It was a time of Elvis and Rock 'n Roll. Of Saturday morning cartoons, the great ones, Bugs Bunny and Popeye, cartoons that were made for adults during the war but were just as enjoyable to us kids. The Mickey Mouse Club, Howdy Doody, The Lone Ranger and Dick Clark's American Bandstand, just to mention a few, were all on the air. A time of long hot summer afternoons spent on the banks of the large rolling river, skipping rocks and fishing with friends. At the same spot along these banks where we went fishing, I learned how to ice skate on its frozen shores. Much to my father's dismay I had gotten a pair of figure skates for Christmas. You see he wanted me to have a pair of hockey skates, but I had insisted on figure skates because of the serrated points. I thought they would make me go faster. He thought boys should only have hockey skates and that figure skates were for girls. I do believe my preferred choice of those sissy figure skates may have wrongly given him cause to be a bit worried about his oldest son.

In the winter we would go sledding at the Illiniwek Park hill. It was a nice long steep hill situated across from Highway 84 and overlooking that big beautiful river. At the bottom of the hill was a gravel road so bales of hay were placed in order to stop the kids from hitting the gravel with their sleds when they came to the bottom of the hill. Now a pile of hay is nice and soft and gives way when you jump into it. But a bale of hay is compact, compressed and hard and it does not give much once you run a sled into it, it is somewhat akin to a soft brick wall. I don't know who thought of placing these bales of hay at these strategic points, but I must assume whoever it was never hit a bale of hay while speeding face first down a slippery, icy hill on a sled. Maybe it was someone who did not like kids.

Just before you reached the bottom of this hill, and before you hit the bales of hay, was a shallow trench about two feet wide that ran across the entire width of the hill. It was probably man made to help with the runoff of the water from the hill when it rained, and the same child-hating guy who put out those bales of hay was probably the one who had dug it. Depending on the depth of the snow this little 'bump' could, and would, cause a various number of exciting finishes to your little, and until now, joyous yet routine sled ride. If the snow was deep enough and filled this trench when you hit this bump the sled would stick in the deep snow. Of course since you were not strapped onto the sled, or nailed to it, you would continue on without the sled, usually somewhat airborne, if only for a split second before you crashed into the hay. But, if the snow was not that deep and so did not fill up this trench, you and your sled would hit this 'dip' at what seemed a blinding speed and with such force that it would shake your little pre-adolescent world and rattle your teeth. Many a child was violently separated from his or her sled in this rough manner. But of course, that was the fun of it! For if not for these 'crash landings', all of this sledding was merely reduced to a quick ride to the bottom of a hill and a long tiresome walk back up it to do it again. But the best part of all of this was that once in a while great moment when you caught this bump at just the right speed, with just the right amount of snow cover, at just the right angle, and you could withstand that bone-jarring jolt to hang onto your sled, where you and your sled would become airborne! And that my friends is what eight year olds live for, of course just a few feet away, that glorious flight would always come to an abrupt end with the meeting of the child, the sled and bales of hay.

It was on a beautiful warm spring day when my soon to be ex-friend Tim and I found a snake pit beneath an old oak tree on the banks of the river. Now I am not sure what kind of snakes they were except that they were water snakes, white and small. Baby snakes. If they were indeed water moccasins then how we did not get bitten and die is beyond me. I would just have to guess that God had decided that Tim and I should get to live a little longer, at least long enough to pay the consequences for what we were about to do. After what we did with some of these snakes I am sure that my parents were not exactly in complete agreement with the Lord on the length of my continued longevity. We captured some of these little rascals, about half a dozen and put them in a can. We then went to my house. A big mistake, and for the life of me I do not remember what in the world we were thinking at this point, that is if we were thinking at all. My father was a part time fisherman who ran trotlines in the Mississippi. Thus he had some nylon strings cut in six-inch lengths that he tied fishhooks to and then tied at intervals along the 100-foot trotlines. Tim and I took a number of these six-inch nylon strings and proceeded to hang the baby snakes by their little necks from my mother's front porch. Needless to say, she was not at home at the time. We then went to hide behind the corner of a neighbor's house with the fiendish hope of seeing the excitement when one of my sisters came home and saw the snakes. Unfortunately it was not one of my sisters who came home first, it was in fact my mother. As we saw her car pull up and park in the street near the house, Tim disappeared; I have not seen or heard from him since. Alone I watched horrified as this dear, unsuspecting woman got out of her car, shut the driver's door, opened the back door taking out two heavy paper bags of groceries and tucking them under each arm as she hip checked the door shut.

Now, have any of you ever noticed how people walk when they are in a familiar, friendly environment? Well, most people walk with their heads slightly down, looking just a few steps ahead of where they are walking as they think of this and that, of how the day has gone or of what they are going to do next. And thus this is how my sweet mother walked up that quiet peaceful sidewalk to our little happy home in Hampton that day. The lady never raised her beautiful head all the way to the little porch, nor took her eyes off of the first step as she proceeded upward onto the concrete landing that set beneath the front door of her cherished home. A home that was about to be changed forever for one little scoundrel who was now hiding behind the corner of the neighbor's house and who could not decide whether to run out and warn his mother before it was too late or to disappear forever like his ex-buddy Tim. Upon stepping onto the second and final step before the landing my mother finally raised her head to look at the front door. But instead of seeing the door she came face to face with a tangling baby snake just inches away from her nose.

It is said that even today if you are in Hampton, Illinois you can find an old timer who remembers that day and the horrible blood curdling, bone chilling scream that echoed across that peaceful Mississippi valley from Rock Island to Clinton, Iowa. In later years I once met a woman who swears she heard my mother scream that day where she lived all the way down south in Keokuk. It is said that the animals in the woods and forests froze in their tracks, that the birds ceased flapping their wings in mid-flight and fell to the earth below, that the cows did not give milk for a week after, that for the next month all the hens in the area laid only hard boiled eggs, that in its centuries old rush towards the gulf the waters of mighty Mississippi itself hesitated and that the fish stopped swimming. It has also been stated as fact that the men in the shops and factories all up and down the river grabbed their lunch buckets and headed for home because they thought the factory whistles had blown to end their day.

But I do not know if all of this is true, for all I can tell you is what I heard and saw at that precise moment when the loving, nurturing life I had known until then came to a sudden and noisy end. My mother screamed so loud and fiercely that all of the poor little snakes instantly died of heart attacks and hung limp on the strings. She threw both bags of groceries so high into the air that it rained Wonder Bread, cans of peas, Campbell's Soup and Navy beans for the next five minutes. For some unknown reason known only to him, my father loved those Navy beans. And my mother, somehow, magically turned into an Olympic sprinter and was down the street and half way around the corner to the schoolhouse before she stopped and before that last can of tomato soup hit the ground. Now it is a scientifically proven fact that when an eight year old child sees and hears their mother scream in such horror that the child too will unwittingly start screaming themselves. And that is what happened here. As my mother ran she would let out one scream after another, pausing only to catch her breath so that she could scream again. At each pause in her screams could be heard my little voice imitating hers like an echo coming from behind the neighbor's home in reply. Thus my answering screams were to be my undoing for as she ran she realized that her screams were being repeated and so she stopped to see from hence the echo came. Spying me, standing beside the house screaming, she halted her escape and came after me, knowing instantly and needing no further proof, who had hung those nasty little snakes from her once sacred porch.

As I stood there watching her, and screaming, it took me a second or two to realize that my mother was now coming after me. As she swooped down on me like a hungry hawk, I saw in her once beautiful loving and caring blue eyes that on this day I would not have to wait until my father came home to get one heck of a spanking. Now it is also a scientific fact that when a human being, even a child, is confronted with a life and death situation they instantly decide between the tactics of fight or flight. Well, an eight year old boy is not going to stand there and slug it out with his mother, besides as angry as this woman was she would have kicked my butt. So I did what any of you would have done, and ran like my pants were on fire in the other direction, still screaming by the way. By now I was starting to go into shock, not just because I was realizing what was going to happen when she finally caught up to me but also because my mother was saying some words that I had never even heard before. She was calling me names that were from some other language, like one of those science fiction alien movies and I thought for one brief moment that she had changed into something from outer space! Upon reflection I find that this is a very interesting situation where it may be the only time a child and a wanted felon have anything in common. And that bond is that in their futile attempts to escape their pursuers the culprits are only making the forthcoming punishment that will be metered out once they are ultimately captured even worse. Well, I will not go into detail on what happened when my mother finally captured her tormentor, lets just say that I didn't sit down for a very long while and that my Dad got his hand in on the action when he came home anyway. To this day I hate snakes, can't stand the sight of them. As for my mother, from that day on till this, and she is now eighty-six years old, she has never again called me by my given name and refers to me only as 'THAT Boy', with the emphases on 'THAT'. Oh yes, and by the way, Tim, if by chance you are reading this, my Mother still wants to talk to you.

Thus we now come to the main reason for this story, The Halloween Party of 1958 at the Hampton Elementary School, or what I have come to call: "My Mother's Revenge."

As I have stated these were very different times than we are currently enjoying. Every morning in class we stood facing the flag and recited the Pledge Of Allegiance, sang God Bless America or the Star Spangled Banner. And we were allowed to pray. They were innocent times where kids went to school and did not have to worry about drugs, gangs or some psycho shooting up the place. Believe it or not all of this was unheard of. Yes all we kids of that time had to deal with were bullies, the humiliation of not being picked to be on a kickball team at recess, boring government made public films on sanitation, proper childhood conduct or what to do in case of a nuclear attack (For Heaven's sake don't look at the flash.)  Other minor concerns were teachers who were allowed to throttle your little neck, pull your ear half off, or beat your bottom raw with a paddle when you misbehaved and of course those imaginary nuclear bombings. Now for those of you who were not present at this time I'll explain the drill that we horrified school children of the Fifties practiced in case of a nuclear attack. Picture a classroom full of eager eight year olds listening intently to what their teacher is saying. Okay, that may be a bit too much to imagine. Alright then, try this, a bunch of kids are in a room sitting half asleep at their desks day dreaming about all the fun they are going to have on Halloween and glancing at the clock and wondering why that hour hand for this last hour between two and three PM is always moving so slow?

When, "RRRRIIIIINNNNGGGGG", an alarm goes off signally that the tiny hamlet of Hampton, Illinois has somehow become a prime military target of that nasty old Soviet Bear and you and everyone you love are about to be blasted, blown away, or melted like an ice cream cone left in the hot summer sun. That is, unless you hide under your desk! When the bell goes off half the class, who has been half asleep, jumps like someone just placed a hot poker on their butts, the teacher stops in mid-sentence, throws up both her arms and YELLS! "GET UNDER YOUR DESKS!" And I mean YELLS! Like this might really be the real thing! She then walks over to that long row of windows that covers the entire wall and draws down all of the blinds! We may all be blown away in the next nanosecond but we won't get a chance to look at that flash. She then walks over and turns off all of the lights, just in case some Commies are flying close by, see the lights and decide to drop their bomb on us. So there you have it. A room full of kids, curled up in a ball, on their knees huddled down under their desks, their faces buried in their hands and with their butts sticking up for all the world to kiss goodbye. In the dark with the blinds pulled down tight so that none of us can see what is really going on out there in the daylight. I always thought that this was not a very dignified way to die and no matter how hard I tried I could not imagine my father down at work bundled up under his workbench in the same manner that I now found myself under my desk. Meanwhile the teacher has returned to her desk and is sitting calming doing her nails while the students all wonder if they are ever going to see mommy again. Is it any wonder that half the kids in this town became 'Nervous Nellies' and dove for cover every time the ice cream truck came down the street ringing its bell or hid under the bed at home when the phone rang?

But all in all school was a fun place, especially on Halloween. On Halloween all the kids got to wear their Halloween costumes to school and in the afternoon there was a Halloween Party with prizes for the best costumes. The whole day was like a day without school only at school, if you know what I mean? Now back in the Fifties most kids wore costumes that were made at home. Sure there were some who had store bought costumes and a few purchased items were always added to home made costumes but it was nothing like it is today were almost all the kids wear something bought from Walgreens or Wal-Mart. These home made costumes were half the fun of Halloween because for weeks before the kids got to pick out what they wanted to be and then help their mothers make up the costumes. So it did seem a little strange to me that year when my mother had all the costumes for my two brothers and three sisters already to go but all she kept saying to me was that my aunt had mine and that it was a very special costume. This was the year that I had wanted to go as The Headless Horseman from the story, "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow." With my aunt involved in the making of the costume I went to bed the night before dreaming of such a scary rendition of this headless aberration, to which I would be magically transformed the next day at school, that I would not only frighten every kid out of their wits but that the teachers would turn pale at the very sight of me! It would be Halloween Heaven for sure. Shoot, I might even win first prize in the costume contest!

However my dream of such a terrifying, frightful day for all my fellow students and our teachers would sadly not come true. For I awoke that morning to find that instead of running off to scare the dickens out of everyone I met as a headless, horseless, horseman I would instead be going to school dressed as a Halloween Party Table!

A what you say? Yeah, well so said I on that morning. My aunt had seen a costume in "Good Housekeeping" magazine, which she and my mother thought would be just the cutest costume a kid could ever wear on Halloween. Cute? Didn't they know that eight-year old boys do not want to be cute on Halloween that they want to be scary? Didn't they know that Good Housekeeping magazine has nothing to do with eight-year old boys? The table was a heavy cardboard cut in a three-foot by three-foot square. Over it was pasted a white paper Halloween party tablecloth with cute little pictures of ghosts, witches, black cats and pumpkins and with an orange and black fringe. A fringe for crying out loud! Boys don't wear anything that has a fringe! Around the table Halloween themed paper plates, napkins and cups had been stabled for a setting for a party of four. "Mr. Frankenstein, party of four, right this way please to the table that is really a kid." Geez! Underneath, on the bottom of the table, were two handles made of small rope loops, punched through the table then wrapped around and tied to each of my arms, making it impossible for me to get in or out of this torture chamber by myself. In the center of the table was a round hole, just big enough to get my head through. As if wearing a table wasn't bad enough they were using my head as the centerpiece! And the worst of it all was that once the table was set down upon my shoulders with my embarrassed red face sticking out of it, they put a plastic pumpkin over my head!

When I, the table, was all set, my aunt and my mother stepped back and laughed with glee. "Oh how cute." Said my aunt. "THAT Boy is going to win first prize." Said my mother. My brothers and sisters just stood there and laughed their heads off. Meanwhile my father, looking very sad, sat at the REAL table drinking his coffee, frowning and shaking his head. I am sure he was thinking that all hope was now lost for his eldest son, first with the sissy figure skates and now the boy is dressed as a fancy, prissy table for Halloween. There was one brief moment when I thought I might escape this humiliation and not have to wear this contraption to school. For when it was time to leave it was discovered that with the table on my shoulders, I couldn't fit through the door. But my mother and her sister simply disassembled the table and pumpkin from my head and shoulders, shoved me out the door and put me back together again. As my siblings and I walked down the sidewalk to the a street now crowded with little ghosts, goblins, witches and other assorted monsters all headed for school, my mother yelled, "Linda, Pat, make sure THAT Boy gets to school." No one, including myself, having given a second thought of how if I couldn't fit through one door to leave, how was I going to fit through another to get in?

On normal days the walk to our school was usually short and uneventful. But that day it seemed like a ten mile march. I stumbled along as a witch, a ghost, a skeleton and one kid dressed in a Davy Crockett coon-skinned hat skipped along beside me making jokes about my attire, while even the slightest breeze would catch the table and pull me this way or that. There were times when I would take two steps forward only to have the wind hit me from the front lifting the tabletop up slapping it into my face, knocking the plastic pumpkin off of my head and pushing me three or four steps back. By the time I did get to school I was punch drunk. Of course as soon as we were out of sight of my mother, my brothers and sisters had all run off ahead of me and thus I struggled on alone.

Someday when you are bored and want to try something new, place a three by three foot piece of cardboard on your shoulders and top it off with a plastic pumpkin on your head. When the pumpkin falls off and goes rolling across the ground, without taking off the cardboard, as I could not reach around to untie the ropes, try picking up the pumpkin. It was a long, tedious, and embarrassing trip to school. When I finally did reach the schoolhouse I encountered a new problem that I am sure my mother and her sister did not consider, steps. Since I couldn't see the steps, or my feet, it took forever to negotiate the five steps up to the double doors of the schoolhouse. And of course the students going in were using only one door at a time plus my arms were too darn short to reach out past the tabletop to grab a handle. If not for the help of a janitor who finally held open both doors I may never have entered the school that day. Which may have been just as well for trying to make my way through the crowded hallways was even worse than being blown around on the windy street outside. Ultimately I made it to my classroom door. I thought for one brief moment that I had finally come up with a solution to this door passage problem by tilting the table and holding it at an angle as I sidestepped through the opening. But to my continued embarrassment halfway through the door the pumpkin again came off of my head wedging the table, the pumpkin and myself in the doorway. Stuck there, I now needed the teacher's assistance to get inside. All of this would have been bad enough if I had been totally alone or incognito. Unfortunately here in my school I was neither and so every move I made and every mishap that occurred was being laughed at and taunted by my fellow students and former friends. Thankfully once inside the classroom it was obvious that I would not be able to sit at my desk when I was a table, so the teacher helped me out of my misfortune and took the table off of my shoulders. The table and pumpkin sat in the corner for the rest of the day, while I swore I would never again wear the darn thing.

At 2 PM it was time for the Halloween party in the school gym. My teacher insisted, and then in the hallway, assisted in once again my donning of the table costume so that I could attend the party. She then escorted me through the double doors of the gymnasium. Once inside the teachers voted for the best costume and guess what won? That's right, The Table. But for me this only presented more problems as now I was supposed to go up onto the stage and receive my award, which meant more steps to climb. Only now these steps were narrower and steeper than the ones outside plus I had to try to get up them in full view of the entire student body and school staff. The stage itself was about a foot higher than the table on my shoulders. When I pushed off the first step to advance to the second step, the front edge of my tabletop hit the front of the stage knocking me backwards right on my butt as the pumpkin head once again fell off of my head and rolled across the floor. As I sat there on the floor I figured by the roar of laughter that erupted in the gym that most everyone present thought this was just about the funniest thing they would ever see. As a teacher helped me up, another retrieved and replaced my pumpkin head and the Principal came down off the stage and reached under the table to hand me the first place award, a blue ribbon.

After all of this I made my way to a back corner and stood watching that hour hand on the clock above the stage move ever so slowly towards that three o'clock bell. The others were all being served punch and cupcakes with orange frosting. But I didn't bother as it was not only impossible for me to reach out from under this tabletop to grasp a drink or a cupcake but I knew it was useless to even try to get either to my mouth. So I simply stood and waited for this purgatory to end. However my misadventures of the Halloween Table were not over just yet. For as some kids finished their punch and cupcakes they started placing the empty cups and wrappers on me, the table! And that was it! That was the last, final piece of indignation and embarrassment that I was going to submit to that day. I leaned forward spilling the cups and wrappers onto the floor while flipping my head forward to discard that stupid, ugly, hot pumpkin head one last time as it fell off and rolled across the floor. I then marched straight for the door bumping into kids and moving them out of the way with the table. When I came to within five feet of the door I lowered my head, aimed for the middle and ran as fast as I could right through it, ripping and crumbling both sides and the front of the cardboard table as I wedged my way through. I went straight down the hall and out the front double doors and home. Halfway there the final bell rang, finally bringing an end to a very long day.

Have A Happy And Safe Halloween,

THAT Boy

"Copyright 2006. Michael E. Tank All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."