A Halloween Trick

A Halloween Trick Remembered

We were in Italy last month and missed Halloween. Both Nita and enjoy the holiday, Nita always decorates the house and buys far to much candy for the number of kids that we get. The evening is always capped with a visit from our two grand daughters Haileigh and Emma. They come over and empty their bags on the floor and tell us about their evening and share their treats with us.
Not being home this year caused me to recall a memory of a Halloween in 1955 when I was eleven. We lived in Champaign Illinois then, a perfect time and place to grow up. There was no fear attached to letting children go out trick-or-treating on their own.
Halloween 1955:
Our class clown was Kenny, he lived several blocks from us but I didn’t get to know him until we went into sixth grade. Kenny knew no boundaries, that is to say he would do anything and worry about the consequences later. He also had the ability to draw Butch, my older brother, an me into his schemes.
Halloween that year had little to do with the traditional “Trick-or-Treating.” Halloween was an opportunity for the ultimate trick for Kenny. The week before Halloween he had taken an old pair of blue jeans and sewed a heavy shirt to the waist band. He sewed the arm and leg holes shut and stuffed his manikin with old newspaper, then he stitched a cloth bag with a ball cap sewn to it to the shirt neck for a head. Kenny, Butch, Danny and I carried our “little brother” with us as we went from house to house. About eight o'clock Kenny pulled two twenty foot pieces of rope out of his candy bag and tied one length of rope to each of “little brothers” arms.
“Come with me,” Kenny said, “this will be fun.”
We went down behind the school to a lightly traveled road where new houses were being built; there were no lights on the road. Kenny laid the manikin, “little brother”, on the side of the road and took one end of the rope across the road into the ditch where he and Danny took cover.
“Now when a car comes down the road, I’ll pull the rope hard and you hold you end of the rope loose but hold it high so “little brother” looks like he is running across the road. ‘Little brother’ will fly in front of the car and the car will hit him, we’ll stay in the ditch until the driver gets out and then we’ll grab ‘little brother’ and run and hide.” Butch and I took the other end of the rope and took cover in the ditch on the other side of the road.
For some reason, that I do not understand now, Kenny’s idea did sound like a lot of fun. We waited for several minutes then saw head lights approaching. The car approached, Kenny waited until the car was almost even with us he yelled, “Now” and pulled the rope. I stood up, held my end of the rope high and let the rope flow through my hand and “little brother” slammed into the cars front fender with a thud. I dove into the ditch.
The car came to a screeching stop and a elderly lady in a dress hurried out of the car and ran to the rear of the car to see what she had hit. I was no more then eight feet from her as she opened the car door. The interior light illuminated her face and I could see horror in her eyes. I felt that if she had shifted her focus to the ditch our eyes would meet. She ran to the body in the road ten feet behind her car. She approached “little brother” and I could hear her say, “Are you alright, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you are you alright?” There was fear and terror in her voice; I could tell she was on the verge of tears.
Just before she reached “little brother” we all sprang out of the ditch and ran with in three feet of her snagging “little brother” and running into the darkness.
Her voice changed to rage and anger. “Dam you little son-of-a-bitch’s, you almost gave me a heart attach.”
Many years earlier back in Saint Bernard a boy in school called me a son-of–a-bitch, and I asked dad “what is a son-of-a-bitch?”
“That means that your mother is a dog,” he had informed me.
Hearing the lady call me a “son-of-a-bitch” I stopped in my tracks. Butch came back grabbed my arm and pulled me on into the darkness.
We all got better with each of the next three cars, Kenny’s timing got better. Ten feet before the care reached us Kenny yelled “Now” and “little brother” sprung into full view of the cars headlights the car hit “little brother” head on and disappeared under the car.
Each time I was within eight feet of the driver exiting their car, face fully lit, terror in their eyes. I can only now imagine what was going through those drivers’ minds seeing what they thought was a boy being hit by their car and disappearing from view as their car passed over his body. In one case the cars wheels ran over “little brother”. Each of the drivers stopped and hurried to aid what they thought was a young child lying in the middle of the road. Each time we sprung from the ditch on either side and ran down the road pulling "Little Brother" behind us and then disappearing into the darkness.
Today I fear what I would do if someone would pull this “Trick” on me.
Two head lights approached; as they drew closed I could see it was a pick-up truck. Butch manned the rope this time. “Now” Kenny screamed and “Little Brother” sprang to life, running across the street right in front of the pick-up. The trucks lights illuminated what looked like an 11 year old boy. I had not watched as closely when I was handling the rope.
The pick-up hit “Little Brother” with a thud and disappeared under the front bumper. The driver slammed on the brakes and the tires screamed. The door of the truck swung open before the truck came to a complete stop. I saw a thirty-ish man in jeans as his alligator skinned cowboy boot hit the pavement, and he saw me.
I pulled my way out of the ditch and hit the pavement running, within four strides the man had caught up with me and I was spun around as he grabbed my arm. He pulled me face to face with him and growled “You little bustard, I’ll give you a Trick that you’ll remember.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Butch running past me in the ditch. He was pulling ‘Little Brothers” rope with him. The pope caught the man about ankle high and pulled his legs out from under him and he hit the pavement hard on his butt. This freed me from his grip and I took off, faster then I had ever run in my life.
Within seconds he was back on his feet running after me. I darted up a 2X8 leading into a new house under construction, ran through the house jumped out the back door and took off across the back yard. The man was not as sure footed up the 2X8 and through the house so I was able to put some distance between us.
Once he cleared the house he started to gain on me, so I dove into a ditch, probably a septic tank field line and laid still. There was no light other then that provided by the moon and it wasn’t all that bright. I could hear him breathing heavy within five feet of my hiding place. He wandered off to the next house and I could hear his heavy boots pounding on the plywood floors. Before he returned to his truck he shouted, “You little bastard, I saw your face, I’ll hunt you down, I’ll find you,” and he disappeared into the night.
Butch, Kenny, and Danny had watched the whole thing from their hiding place on top of a mound of dirt 50 feet away. They came and pulled me out of the five foot trench that had saved me. They were even able to get me laughing about the whole nightmare. Within two minutes and we were headed back to the street in search of our next victim.
Our evil trick ended with the arrival of a police car, apparently the man in the alligator boots was true to his threat. Lucky for us we spotted the police car before he spotted us and Kenny tucked “Little Brother” under his arm and all four us ran home laughing and reliving our adventure all the way.
Looking back on my life that nights activities represent the meanest act that I have ever committed on another human being. I don’t know what ever happened to Kenny.