Boo! and Poo

It’s a good thing--Halloween hijinks have been toned down so much over the years they hardly exist anymore.  Back in the 40s and 50s failing to provide a proper treat could result in some serious tricks.

In many communities, “Gate Night” produced various levels of damage and civic disruption by older youths, who perpetrated some strange acts apparently just for the hell of it.

Soaping windows was fairly innocuous.  Tossing trash onto Main Street from cars driven by juveniles set the bar a little higher.  Actually tearing gates off fenced areas to fulfill the Gate Night tradition was not uncommon. There were other types of property damage.  Local police gave chase when they spotted miscreants, but they were outnumbered by bands of roving youths and had little chance of apprehending anybody.

The police even could be the target. My father recalled Gate Night escapades back in the early 1900s when he was growing up in Wausau, Wisconsin, long before police had squad cars.  They traveled by bicycle when in hot pursuit.  His favorite story:

A group of boys spread horse manure liberally in an alley between two garages.  They strung a sturdy cord between the buildings about four feet above the mess, and then lured an officer into chasing them into the alley on his bike at full speed.  The result was not pretty for one of Wausau’s finest.

A somewhat similar Halloween story told in my hometown involved the lads who lived in "Jersey City," a community a short distance outside the city limits. The victim was "Shorty" Ruff, a small man whose outhouse was a favorite tip-over target during Gate Night forays by neighborhood youths.

After several years of outhouse restoration projects, Shorty decided enough was enough. Early on Gate Night, he took a seat in his outhouse with shotgun in hand, ready to scare away the most dedicated vandals who might show up.

Legend has it that Shorty fell asleep. The tippers appeared and had their way with the outhouse as usual. Shorty fell into the pit. He was said to be uninjured but considerably more aromatic when he emerged.

Cops, outhouse users, and all the rest of us can be happy these sorts of things won’t happen this year.  Or will they? Only the witches’ brew can tell us for sure.

Showing Your (?) Colors

Those with a sharp eye will recognize a Bucky Badger and University of Wisconsin “W” adorning son Lee’s apron pocket as he and fiancée Karen took a photo op break from preparing this year’s Thanksgiving dinner.

With Wisconsin on a football roll toward the Rose Bowl, the UW emblem was only fitting. What didn’t fit is that Lee is a University of Minnesota grad. I gave him the apron a few years back.

It was a retaliation gift. Lee had presented me with two Golden Gopher golf sweaters and a cap. The cap had a big Minnesota rhomboid emblem. I tried, not very successfully, to make the cap work to my advantage.

My golfing partners in Utah had no idea what the block “M” represented, and when they asked I informed them it stood for “Money,” and that’s what I intended to win during that day’s round. The theory was my brazen statement might rattle opponents and negatively affect their games. Of course, once they saw me play a few holes any edge I had acquired evaporated.

When Lee was a Minnesota student, Sandy and I would journey to the Twin Cities for U of M-UW football games. Lee visited Madison with us when the games were played there. He went one up in the family rivalry one year when he lulled me into trusting him to buy the Madison tickets. Our seats were right next to the Minnesota band. The proximity to the loud “Here’s to the U or M” guys had the desired effect of drowning out my feeble “U rah rahs” for Wisconsin.

Karen is a Purdue University grad. She’s not big on football rivalries, and thus takes a more adult approach by wearing an apron devoid of school colors. However, if she decides to pull some sort of sophomoric stunt on the geezer, she may qualify for her very own Bucky Badger apron, or perhaps a nice chef’s hat with a cardinal “W.”