Reminiscing!
By Bill Shepard
By the time you read this, Halloween will have come and gone. All that is left is the candy you may have collected, or that which was left over at your house. When my sister asked if I had written about the Halloween we celebrated as children, I knew I had to write.
Bill Shepard
Halloween on the mill village seemed different than elsewhere. I suppose m world was different but I loved it. I grew up on that part of the village that was referred to as “over the creek!” If someone asked me where I lived, I always answered, “Over the creek!” Strangely enough, most folk would know where that was. The clerks at the big Company Store knew; my schoolteachers at St. John’s School knew! The man at the YMCA where I went for mail knew! We didn’t have street names and house numbers when I was a boy. My address was just what I said, “over the creek!” It would be a lot of years later before we had street names and house numbers. When it finally happened that our streets were given names, I often wondered why the street where I lived wasn’t named Shepard Street! We had probably lived there longer than anyone else. Instead, the streets were given names of folk that had never lived on our village. That was all right; at least folk could send us a letter addressed to a street instead of the YMCA.
Yes, things were different a way back then. We seemed to live in a world of our own, and we surely celebrated Halloween in a unique way! On Halloween night, we boys would gather on the street and get ready to go tricking up and down the street come night. We didn’t know anything about a treat! I think I might have been a grown man before I heard of the term, Trick or Treat! We knew how to do the tricking part! If folks had left their chairs on the front porch they might find them on the street the next morning. Not many folks had left their chairs on the front porch they might find them in the street the next morning. Not many folk had a radio in those days, but if they did they experienced a lot of static on Halloween night. A person had to have a ground rod with a wire from the radio attached to it. By scraping the wire with a piece of metal one could cause a lot of static inside. We should not have done that, but we did, and I am sorry. Of course its too late to ask forgiveness, for the folk that were the victims of that kind of tricking are long since moved to another world. No, I did not know that a person could get a treat instead of a trick!
We did everything different when I was a boy. We made our own fun. We made up games to play, made our own rules, and if necessary, we made the things we needed to play with. If we were playing ball, the balls we used were made from bobbins of thread brought from the mill. With a hickory nut or a black walnut for a center we would wrap it with thread from the bobbin until it reached the size we wanted it to be. We played ball in an open field near the village. If it was winter and we went to the woods for hunting wild game (birds) we made our own weapon! A sling shot, made from prongs cut from a tree, rubber bands cut from one of Dad’s discarded tire inner tubes, nd a leather pocket from an old shoe, and we were equipped for hunting! Of course, te ammunition was rocks gathered from a nearby railroad track! When March winds blew, we made our own kites, and in marble season we made marbles from hardened clay, baked in the sun.
Ours was a unique way of life but it was fun! We made our own way. It was a fun time then, and you probably guessed right, this writer enjoys looking back and writing about that time that came and went.
Mr. Shepard is a native of Darlington, S.C., and a current resident of Piedmont, S.C. He is the author of “Mill Town Boy” and “Bruised”. He has been sharing his tales of growing up in Darlington for decades, and we are delighted to share them each week. His mailing address for cards and letters is: Bill Shepard 324 Sunny Lane, Piedmont, S.C., 29673