Halloweening
1911 postcard of boys stealing a gate on Halloween night.
Every year when the air grows colder and the darkness begins to settle down upon us, our intrepid archivist dons his favorite shroud and squirms his way into the crypt (aka “the archives”) in search of some Halloween treasures to share with you, our dear spooky friends.
While certainly not as spooky as last year when we peered into darkened mirrors to see the future with the Turner family, or any of our annual VT Untapped Spooky Halloween Specials, this time we dug around the vault and turned up some wonderful early 20th century accounts of how young Vermonters marked the day. Back then, Halloween was much more about mischief (to put it mildly) than scares, so get set to explore the old tradition of pranks on Halloween night.
However, in light of the season, first let’s take a look at some photographs we recently, and unexpectedly, turned up in the Duclos Flint Family Collection.
Donated to us by the son of the late Katharine Flint Duclos (1907-2010) of Braintree, VT, Mrs. Duclos’s collection of family photographs features holidays, family gatherings and everyday activities from the 19th century through the 1930s. Last week when Andy, VT Folklife’s Associate Director and Archivist, was going through the materials he came across something he hadn’t noticed before, and certainly never expected to find: photos dated 1928 that appear to be from Halloween.
Wonderful, huh?
And here are some close ups:
Is it Halloween? The coats the boys are wearing in the first picture do suggest it’s fall. Put that together with the costumes and, well, could be that it is. However, without additional documentary evidence, it’s impossible to know with complete certainty.
And how about that mask? Andy has some inquiries out to Halloween collectors about what it could be. His first thought was that it might be Bluto from the Thimble Theater/Popeye comic strip, but that character didn’t appear until 1932. Someone else suggested it could be a Barney Google mask, while others proposed it could be a generic “hobo” mask. Seems this too will remain a mystery–at least for the time being.
Now on to the stories.
Halloweening (cont.)
1916 postcard of a Halloween prank.
Katharine Duclos, whose story we share below, referred to the mischief (and sometimes outright destruction) kids got into during Halloween in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as Halloweening. We don’t know how widely that term was used, but we do love it, so taking a lead from Mrs. Duclos it’s our term of choice. Halloweening entailed kids playing pranks—some ultimately harmless, some annoying, some clever, some destructive and some outright dangerous—on adults and on their communities.
An important thing to understand is that back then this behavior was both expected and sanctioned (within reason) on Halloween and the night prior—primarily (and still) called Cabbage Night in Vermont, and Mischief Night, Devil’s Night and other names elsewhere—when adults gave young people license to break the rules. Most of the Halloweening stories in the VT Folklife Archive focus on property-related pranks that range from annoyances (moving someone’s woodpile from the yard to their porch and blocking the front door) to dangerous (stealing and hiding front porch steps) to destructive (knocking over outhouses) to industrious and zany (disassembling wagons and reassembling them on the tops of buildings, stealing livestock and leaving them in inappropriate places like the school house) to what today feels outright criminal (stealing outhouses, piling them up in a field and setting them on fire).
Just what was considered going too far is hard to gauge from the interviews alone—that would require deeper investigation into newspapers and other sources to suss out. However, there are several things that we can glean from the interviews: regardless of what you were up to, getting caught was a very bad idea; conscience did—at least eventually—intervene; and the excitement and humor perpetrators found in these acts persisted across their lifetimes.
Rudolph and Lou Ann Rotax, Monkton, VT.
Interviewed by Jane Beck on February 24, 1995.
There was a lot of other kids around too of course, everybody was out on Halloween. They didn't go begging from house to house, trick or treat. They went out, they got the tricks first, without any treat. — Rudolph Rotax
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Lou Ann Rotax: How about on Halloween?
Rudolph Rotax: Oh that was kind of rough sometimes. We pushed an old outhouse over and there was a man in it, down there once. That just as you're going to Ferrisburgh going down in, just as you come down they got, and there's a little house there, but there's a, that ravine doesn't look very deep but it's probably forty-five feet down there.
Jane Beck: Is that right?
Rudolph Rotax: And way out on the bank on stilts is this little outhouse out here and nobody liked it anyway. Cause you didn't have to have no skirt on it nor nothing. And a fellow by the name of Nelt White used to live there. And one day Halloween we was going down there and we decided “let's push it over.” And see we just, there was five of us, and we just grabbed right a hold and started pushing and of course he didn't say nothing, once it got leaning over good then he started hollering. And then we didn't dare stick around then. We found out the day after that, cause I don't know, one of us went down with my grandfather with some grist or something and telling them that somebody pushed it over with him in it, but it didn't hurt him very bad. And we was glad of that. And then this Antoine Weisenback that lived down here, went down there and he had a milk wagon and a small wagon and he took his milk to the creamery and we took that all to pieces and put it on the top of the barn roof and put it all together again. Ha! And then down just this side of Ferrisburgh there, the man had his cows all on one side of the road and we took them all off in that pasture and called them and put them all on the other side of the road in another pasture. Ha! Ha!
Jane Beck: Did you get found out?
Rudolph Rotax: No.
Jane Beck: Ha! Ha!
Lou Ann Rotax: Did other kids do that same thing?
Rudolph Rotax: There was a lot of other kids around too of course, everybody was out on Halloween. They didn't go begging from house to house, trick or treat. They went out, they got the tricks first, without any treat.
Lou Ann Rotax: But you never set houses on fire or anything like that?
Rudolph Rotax: Oh no.
Lou Ann Rotax: Right?
Rudolph Rotax: We never burned anything up or never broke anything outside of that outhouse and we decided after that we'd never do that again.
Lou Ann Rotax: Ha! Ha!
Rudolph Rotax: Of course we didn't know there was anybody in there.
Lou Ann Rotax: Not until it was tipped too far over. Ha! Ha!
Rudolph Rotax: Once it got going tipping too far then how he could holler and this, he was a little short fellow with a big handle bar mustache.
Jane Beck: Did you know who it was when you were–?
Rudolph Rotax: No, he never, we didn't even know he was—we did as soon as he started hollering, we knew he was in there cause he lived all alone, he could be the only one. Ha! Ha! That was in there. But he took it in pretty good heart. Cause he was a pretty tricky fellow too. Ha! Ha!
Guy and Hester Livingston, Fayston, VT.
Interviewed by Jane Beck on March 5, 1992.
I didn't get out, mostly I never went out Halloween night but, I think I was, I must of been about a junior in high school… — Guy Livingston
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Guy Livingston: I never went out much for Halloween, but when we lived up there, by Merritt Braggs, the Churches, Cora and Arthur Church, is up where, their farm is up where the spring, what is it, Cold Spring Lodge is now, up by the airport, by <unclear> DeFrees, they had a Halloween party and everybody go and have cider and apples, and stuff like that, and donuts and everybody would visit, you know, and there's, my folks that are living since and the Braggs, Folsoms, and Eurichs and the DeFrees, I don't, maybe Longs, all go there for the one night. I didn't get out, mostly I never went out Halloween night but, I think I was, I must of been about a junior in high school, who had a principal named Lindslay, and he lived, in an apartment house, it's still got on across the road from <unclear> garage, or Waitsfield Auto now, he had a I think about a thirty-three Ford sedan, and he locked it up, and took the keys out, he locked the steering and locked the car up too. Well this Halloween, the morning after Halloween, his car was missing. And, the next afternoon, they found it, and it was over where the polo field is now. About a year before, Goodyear lived there then, on the farm, they lost the cow in there, and he was a father-in-law to, Florence Tucker, and the cow got in and they had to dig it, and dig around and get it out, so that's a pretty good hole. So what the boys had done, they'd get on each side of the car, and picked it up, and lugged it over and dropped it down in the hole and they covered it over with hay, and straw. And the next afternoon, before they found it. And, <unclear> had a, I think a ton Model A truck he used for a wrecker, they got him to pull it out, and the car wasn't damaged at all. They just dropped it straight in—and try that with a new car. Ha! Ha! It would be totaled, you know. Ha! Ha!
Jane Beck: That's amazing.
Hester Livingston: Yeah.
Guy Livingston: And, but I, I never, the boys never did, I never did really know who was that, they kept pretty quiet about that. Ha! Ha! Ha! Of course most of them probably was still in school.
Jane Beck: I would think they would be a little nervous about retaliation. Ha! Ha!
Katharine Duclos and Perkins Flint
Katharine Duclos and her father Perkins Flint (1878-1969), both born and raised in Braintree, VT, were a Vermont father/daughter storytelling pair akin to Daisy and Alec Turner of Grafton. We shared the two stories below in Episode 8 of our VT Untapped™ podcast, The Perks of Being a Storyteller, but love them so much we decided to pull them out once more.
Katharine Duclos, Braintree, VT.
Interviewed by Greg Sharrow on June 20, 1990.
“Sometimes after that we kids would go out Halloweening. One time, I never went but once, my dad found out about it and he never let me go again…” – Katharine Duclos
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Greg Sharrow: That's what I figured, so I will ask you another thing. Halloween, how kids celebrated Halloween.
Katharine Duclos: We always had a party at school. The teacher got up a program, plays and poems. There was a teacher's magazine that usually had a page of poems appropriate to Christmas or Halloween. Everybody made a jack 'o lantern. Each kid tried to make one better than the other fellows. We decorated them with a carrot nose and cornsilk eyebrows and whiskers. We kids made our own candles. We had an old-fashioned candle mold. And beforehand we'd take some tallow and string up that, so we had homemade candles. Come the night that it came for Halloween, the parents would come and they would all bring lanterns or lamps to light the schoolhouse, of course there was no lights there. And we'd have the program. Then after the program they usually had refreshments of cider, donuts mostly. Sometimes after that we kids would go out Halloweening. One time, I never went but once, my dad found out about it and he never let me go again. We found where one old fellow picked up a lot of apples the day before, let it go to the cider mill, and we dumped those all out. Then we went over through where Lester Flint lived. The next place is where Arbuckle lives. There was two brothers that lived, Lester and Waldo. We took Lester's wheelbarrow and wheeled it over and put it on Waldo's land. They didn't speak to each other. Lester wouldn't go and get it off of Waldo's land, we knew that. That was what we did to be bad. Besides that we took the stove out of the schoolhouse and took it down over the bank. So when they went the next morning they didn't have any stove. So see dad didn't let me go again, he found out some of the things we did. Lester had to pay his nephew 50 cents to go get the wheelbarrow off from his brother's field! But they did, they cut up. They put wagons, take people's wagons to pieces and put it up on barn roofs. They did all those kinds of things. And then it was permissible to go around with a spool and scare people. You take a spool and cut notches all around it, thread spool. You put a spike through it and a string on it and pull on, wind it up and pull it, it would make an awful noise on a window. And you'd find somebody sitting in there, and then you'd do that. They did a lot of damage in those days, more like that, practical jokes more like taking people's steps and moving them and things like that.
Perkins Flint, Braintree, VT.
Interviewed by Katharine Duclos circa 1967.
“And some of the young folks at Halloween time…” – Perkins Flint
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Perkins Flint: Used to be three Flint brothers, Harry Flint, Lester Flint and Waldo Flint. But that breed of Flints always seemed to have quite a lot of family troubles. And first Waldo and Harry weren't on speaking terms. And later on they got so they could speak, and Waldo and Lester weren't on speaking terms. And they ordered each other never to step foot on each other's land. Of course all the neighbors knew about it. And some of the young folks at Halloween time took Lester's wheelbarrow that he was very choice of and wheeled it down into Waldo's mowing down below his barn, where when Lester went out in the morning he could look right down and see it. Then they took Waldo's cow pasture bars and put up on Lester's. Lester told me about it and he says, "You know, I'd a never went down there after that wheelbarrow if I never had it." But during the day his nephew, Harry Flint's boy Francis, come down. He give him a quarter to go down and get the wheelbarrow and roll it up home. How Waldo got his bars, I never knew.
To access the full interview recordings and transcripts, please contact VT Folklife Archivist, Andy Kolovos.