The school year 1921-22 was moving almost too fast. It was soon time for
the big Halloween Party, and, by the second semester, the new folk dance
teacher would be on campus. There was much more excitement about folk dancing
than Amelia ever would have imagined.
In the meantime, Marietta Johnson had already made one trip to Greenwich,
where her summer teacher training school was held, and met in New York City
with the “Fairhope Educational Foundation” who gave fund-raisers for her
school. When she traveled she was always invited to speak in neighboring towns,
and she took the opportunity to encourage them to employ Organic methods in
their school systems. She never returned to Fairhope without a family or two
following her, to see her demonstration school at work. Most stayed and
enrolled their children. There were over 100 students, many of them boarders.
All the students were excited about the Halloween party they would hold in
Comings Hall. The older students organized projects to make the party
fun—a costume contest, cakewalks, washtubs of water full of apples, and
booths surrounding the rim of the hall with games.
Everybody in school would be involved in decorating the big, empty hall.
They envisaged the event as a massive fund-raiser, even though little money
exchanged hands. They would charge for a wheel of tickets, and every game and
contest would cost a certain number of tickets. The parents got involved with
refreshments—a bake sale, plates of ham and potato salad, lemonade and
punch. A large urn of coffee would be on hand. Mothers baked cakes for the big cakewalks which would be held periodically during the
evening. Mordecai Arnold, father of Louisa and five other Organic students, had
for several years volunteered for the job of calling the cakewalks, which
featured himself standing in the center of the circle while Piney Gaston played
her enthusiastic brand of piano, stopping suddenly, and calling a random number
for a handful of cards handed him by Mrs. Johnson. Whatever
cakewalker—man, woman or child—was standing on the square marked
with that number, was the winner of a homemade cake! This age-old party game
always had currency in Fairhope.
The school event would be on the Friday of Halloween weekend, meaning that
most of that day was taken with preparations for the party. The high school
emerged as organizers, painting the floor with the cakewalk circle, putting up
posters all around town, and decorating Comings Hall with festoons of crepe paper
and huge handmade posters of witches, black cats and jack-o-lanterns they had
created in their Arts and Crafts classes. The older boys were in charge of the
Fun House, which was set apart on the stage with the curtain drawn. Behind that
curtain they had created a maze of reconstructed cardboard cartons, a crazy
mirror, the tunnel to a barrel that would roll its occupant some ten feet, and
an exit on a slide down the steps to the main floor. The boys guided their
charges, mostly kids their age or younger, through the labyrinth to the exit.
If a child entered who was clearly not able to make his way, he was given an
abbreviated tour.
Five cakewalks were scheduled during the evening, and one big costume
parade. Sarah, looked astonishingly beautiful in a gypsy
skirt and blouse with golden hoop earrings. Paul Frederick, Jim Gaston and
Maxwell Taylor were judging the costumes. This was a wrench for Max, who had a
hankering to win with his Mad Hatter costume, but he had recused himself from
the competition to lend his expertise as a judge.
All the town, Amelia reckoned, showed up for the party, and
in fancy dress too. Captain and Mrs. Cross came as Tweedledum
and Tweedledee from Alice in Wonderland; E.B. Gaston
came as a wizard in a high pointed hat with stars on it, and his wife came as
Mother Goose. Mrs. Johnson felt she should have come as The Old Woman Who Lived
in a Shoe, but she didn’t know how to articulate that as a costume, so she
settled on a ghost costume, which didn’t fool anybody for long.
The women of Fairhope had spent weeks making these costumes, sometimes
going against their better judgment when asked by their children to create such
outlandish disguises. One boy gave his mother the task of designing a Headless
Horseman costume. She accomplished this by taking a hatbox to cover his head
and shoulders, attaching a tin can to the top of it to provide a neck, covering
the whole thing with construction paper and cutting slits in the box so he
could see. He made a head for his horse, and the head he
would carry under his arm, out of papier-maché in his
arts and crafts class. The horse’s body was a broom. Fairhope children rode
brooms as horses all the time.
One of the school’s big families, the Arnolds, came as the ragged,
shipwrecked Swiss Family Robinson, taking the idea from a book they were
reading together. Their oldest four children were boys, with Ezekial (“Zeke”) being a senior in high school, and the other,s stair steps on down in
size. The two youngest girls took part with Louisa playing Jenny, the English
girl who appears at the end of the book. The toddler Bonnie dressed as Knips, the monkey.
Hal and Martha Etheridge and their daughter Ally came as a family of French
poodles.
Avery and Amelia decided not to tell each other what they were working on
for costumes. Avery’s was quite unusual, Amelia could see that—at its
base a black, body covering leotard, such as worn by circus performers. She
peeked one afternoon as Avery assembled all the components of the costume, but
Avery shooed her out as soon as she saw her.
“This is ART!” she told her roommate. “I need my solitude to create!”
Amelia stood outside the bedroom door like a curious child. “It doesn’t
look like art to me,” she called. “It looks like black underwear!”
But it did look rather like art at that. She knew also that there was a
lampshade involved.
Amelia would dress as a scarecrow, in bedraggled men’s clothes with a
floppy straw hat and bunches of hay sticking out of her shirt cuffs and pant
legs. The girls agreed not to see each other dressed until the party, so Avery
put on her costume at the School Home, which was chaotic with children getting
into costumes. Amelia dressed at The Sieve, and walked to Comings Hall in full
scarecrow attiree. It was still daylight. She might
scare a few crows on her way. The party started at 5 P.M. and she didn’t want
to be too early or too late.
She was hardly prepared for the pandemonium. She watched in awe as the hall
filled up-- little kids were literally climbing in the rafters, and the crush
of partygoers in bizarre modes of dress was impressive. Jim Holloway was
Abraham Lincoln, and it turned out Avery was a floor lamp, complete with cord
and plug. She had cut out eyes in the lampshade so she could see. She was quite
a figure. Jim took one look at Amelia in her scarecrow attire and said, “Who
are you? Luther Beagle?”
Moments like this made Amelia wish she had the kind of quick wit that Avery
did. She said, “Who are you? Charlie Chaplin?” It got a laugh, but she wasn’t
sure it was really funny.
She and Jim were having their ham dinners when the first cakewalk was
called. They put their plates aside and took part in the walk which was made
more fun by the running commentary by Mr. Arnold, describing the costumes and
chanting, “One, two, three, four, keep walkin’,” and
Piney, in a witch costume with a long black gown and a pointed hat, played a
variety of tunes, from “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to John Phillip Sousa
marches—and the walkers fairly strutted in time creating a kaleidoscope
of color and contrasts.
“And the first cake goes to the gentleman without a head!” he announced as
one of the mothers beamingly presented a cake to the headless horseman. The boy
had to pass the cake to his parents so he could continue to enjoy the party.
Without a head he couldn’t bob for apples, but he remained headless to the
costume parade.
This would be the climax of the party. At that moment the milling,
chattering crowd of fantastical characters circled the hall in a slow-moving,
serpentine extravaganza of color and flash. Disparate characters talked with
one another, a circus of incongruity. The four judges, just as extravagantly
attired, were making notes and conferring with each other about what they saw.
One by one contestants would be tapped on the shoulder by a judge and asked to
form a smaller circle in the center. Clearly these were the finalists: The
Crosses, the Headless Horseman, the floor lamp, Abraham Lincoln, and one four
year old in a fairy costume that looked as if it came from a road company of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Max showed his theatrical side in announcing the inner circle of winning
looks. How different he was in his role as a theater director! His voice
boomed, and he exuded the confidence
of a circus ringmaster—which he was for the night.
His replication of the Mad Hatter in the Tenniel drawing was complete with a
lopsided top hat that had a tag tucked into the ribbon, saying In This Style 10/6. He added a dramatic flair to his announcements.
Amelia had never noted the rich baritone timbre of his voice before.
“The floor lamp with the astonishing hourglass figure is runner-up Number
Two!” Max bellowed. Applause from the crowd. Not that
Avery had the kind of figure called an “hourglass” by previous generations, but
her female shape definitely showed in the black body stocking. She may have
been embarrassed by Max’s description, but if she was blushing it was hidden
under a lampshade.
“Tweedledum and Tweedledee
agreed to have a battle—” he said, “But they won’t have it tonight,
because together they are the First Runners Up!”
It was clear how much everybody loved the Crosses. There was a wave of
applause and whistles.
“And the winner of this year’s Best Costume Award...” Jim in his Abe
Lincoln get-up looked as if he thought he would surely win, and the little girl
did a fairy dance in the most modest way she could.
“The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow!”
No one was surprised or disappointed when the headless horseman won the
contest. His prize was a handmade pottery jack-o-lantern, made with some artistic
flourishes by Miss Kitwell. It had been glazed bright
orange in the kiln, and filled by the high school students with homemade fudge.
After the presentation of the prize, the crowd began to mill around,
forming random patterns of colors and patterns. There were enough witches to
add a dash of black among the contrasting splashes of bright color. The
oversized bow around the neck of the mad hatter was blue with big gold polka
dots and the Swiss Family Robinson were mostly in
white and gray. There was Julian Crane as Father Time, a grim reaper with a
sickle and a dingy white robe, accompanied by his wife in sparkling white as
the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Abraham
Lincoln had his arm around the waist of a beautiful gypsy girl and was gazing
down into her eyes. Mr. Gaston, for the night a wizard, possibly of the dark
arts, approached them with his peaked hat—sparkling with moons and stars—slightly
askew. Mrs. Johnson, well concealed under a ghostly sheet, strode around the
room, as if she assumed she had anonymity in her village for a night. Amelia
realized she was truly anonymous; her scarecrow costume included a hooded mask,
and she was new, so not that easily recognized. The phantasmagoria of costumes
disguised the usually reserved, scholarly reformers, teachers and parents, and
it was as if the town had actually become inhabited by their doppelgangers.
The floor lamp came up to her and said, “Well? What do you think? Does this
group know how to put on a party or not?”
“I never saw anything quite like it,” Amelia responded. “I’m beginning to
understand the concept of the surrealist movement.”
“I think it’s about time to leave this cacophony of color and go home,”
Avery said.
The party was indeed winding down as people gathered up their things and
told each other goodbye until tomorrow—which would be the day they would
get together to take down the decorations.
When they got home Avery went straight upstairs to get ready for bed, but
Amelia went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of cocoa. She needed to
unwind. When the milk was hot she stirred it into the cocoa powder and sugar,
thinking of the party. She heard noise from next door, as if maybe Sam Bradley
might be having his own gathering. She walked out to the back porch to see what
was happening.
“Hell-FAR and damnation!” came the boom of a man’s voice. A chill went down
her spine as she strained to see who making the racket.
It was clear in the dim light from Bradley’s back porch that he was
ejecting someone from his house.
“The devil take ‘em
all!” The man was screaming.
Amelia had not heard such language in Fairhope. She was riveted to the
spot, squinting to see who it was. Bradley’s voice was low, as if trying to
tame a wild beast.
“I know how you feel, but we can’t do nothin’
about this,” Bradley was saying. “It’s time you went home to cool off.”
“They’re all goin’ to HELL anyway.”
Just then the cursing man wheeled away and started to stumble up the path
to the street. She had a glimpse of his face, distorted in rage but eerily
smiling. After a moment she recognized Curry Cumbie,
but Amelia was thunderstruck with remembered fear.
She thought of the wicked witch causing danger to her teddy bear. She heard
her own voice warning her cuddly toy of hellfire and damnation. She began to
understand the source of her mistrust of this man, and once the connection was
made she would carry it with her the rest of her life. Miss Pritchart.
*
The real Halloween, October 31, was Monday. The date was known as a night
of mischief. A few high school boys let livestock loose on the streets, not
doing real damage. Some threw a few eggs into the trees on the streets of homes
they knew well—basically their own and those of friends.
The big event was taking Luther Beagle, the town drunk, to the bay and
giving him his yearly bath. Luther protested, as usual, but he was light in
weight, so that two boys were able to subdue and lift him after he realized
that fighting was futile. He had gone through this for several years by now, so
he knew well that protesting would only postpone the inevitable. Usually he
tried to hide from the boys, but his cunning was long gone and he could never
successfully avoid his yearly dunk. It was a rite of passage for the older
teenaged boys in Fairhope to abduct the old derelict, in his fit of mostly
feigned outrage, and haul him off to the big pier, late at night, every
Halloween. They claimed it was the only bath he got all year.
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