Halloween

Found these thoughts on FaceBook written by Robert Eisenhardt an RHS graduate from the 1970s.

"There was a time when we were young, and our parents trusted the world. We would be dressed up in costumes, often made last minute by our elders, and just let out into the local neighborhood to collect candy. That was all there was too it. We came back alive and looked forward to the next year when we would tramp those same streets through odd leaf piles and wonder what was ahead of us. Then ... one year ... we decided to pass it all by and at that moment, we began to grow up. Such was Halloween."

I would like to add that often times the costumes were made at the last minute and took the form of a hobo. It was easy to grab one of our father's old hats, rub charcoal on our faces, and stuff leaves into our shirts as if we had just awoken from a nap in a leaf pile. I think it was the simplicity of the effort which captured our fancy, running around the neighborhood with our friends gathering candy from all our neighbors without a thought as to what might be hidden behind the doors of the houses we visited. If the lights were on we came to visit. We knew that after a while people turning their lights out meant they were out of candy.